Mysticism  an  Epistemological  Problem 


A  DISSERTATION 

Presented  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School 

of  Yale  University  in  Candidacy  for  the 

Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy 


BY 

MURIEL  BACHELER  DAWKINS,  PH.D. 


To  MY  MOTHER  AND  FATHER 


THE  TUTTLE,   MOREHOUSE   &  TAYLOR   COMPANY 


i 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER         I.     The  General  Problem  of  Mysticism 5 

CHAPTER       II.     Some  Recent  Formulations  of  this  Problem      8 
CHAPTER      III.     Mysticism  an  Epistemological  Problem  ...      19 

CHAPTER      IV.     The  Epistemological  Problem  in  Meister 

Eckhart 28 

CHAPTER  V.  The  Grounds  of  Certainty  in  Meister  Eck- 
hart    41 

CHAPTER  VI.  The  Mystical  Motive;  as  seen  in  St.  Ber- 
nard of  Clairvaux,  Joachim  of  Floris, 
Bonaventura 51 

CHAPTER    VII.     The  Mystical  Motive  in  Thinking 61 

CHAPTER  VIII.  Some  Objections  to  an  Interpretation  of 
Thinking  as  Involving  a  Mystical 
Motive 72 

CHAPTER  IX.  The  Significance  of  the  Formulation  of  the 
Problem  of  Mysticism  as  an  Episte- 
mological Problem 78 


333559 


MYSTICISM  AN  EPISTEMOLOGICAL 
PROBLEM. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  MYSTICISM. 

Mysticism  as  a  philosophy  is  a  doctrine  of  the  "Abstract 
Universal/'1  Whenever,  from  the  time  of  the  Indian  Upanishads, 
through  Neoplatonism  and  mediaeval  catholic  mysticism,  even 
in  the  later  days  of  the  Quakers,  mysticism  has  become  specula- 
tive, has  sought  to  formulate  its  own  inner  meaning,  it  has  been 
marked  by  a  characterless  Absolute  at  the  center  of  it.  The 
"Neti,  neti"  of  the  Upanishads,  the  "Nameless  Nothing,"  the 
"Abysmal  Dark,"  the  "Silent  Wilderness  of  the  Godhead  where 
no  one  is  at  home,"  of  the  Christian  mystics,  the  "One"  (TO  ev) 
which  is  beyond  (eTreVctva)  all  things  both  spiritual  and  sensible, 
the  absolutely  unexpressible  and  unthinkable,  are  all  typical 
examples  of  the  philosophical  self-expression  of  mysticism.  It 
would  be  hard,  perhaps,  to  discover  a  poorer  speculative  theory. 

Not  only  has  the  mystic's  theory  been  often  and  most  thor- 
oughly refuted,  but  it  is  really  incapable  of  rational  state- 
ment. For  whoever  formulates  the  doctrine,  does,  by  that  very 
act,  refute  it.  The  mystic  finds  no  satisfaction  in  any  object  of 
knowledge  which  is  less  than  absolute,  ultimate — yet  every  object 
of  knowledge  is  less  than  ultimate,  is  somehow  defined,  does 
somehow  depend  for  its  character  on  another.  Therefore  reality 
must  be  to  the  mystic  no  object  of  sense  or  of  knowledge  at 
all,  nothing  defined  or  definable,  nothing  even  real  or  imagin- 
able— and  in  these  positings  the  mystic  not  only  contradicts  him- 
self and  all  principles  of  rationality,  but  he  also  destroys  his  own 
doctrine  by  actually  defining  his  Real,  though  only  indeed  as  an 
absolutely  unknowable,  a  zero, — and  his  ineffable  zero  he  defines 
in  turn  as  somehow  the  only  Real.  For  the  mystic,  having,  in  his 
attempt  to  avoid  all  limitation  of  his  Real,  limited  it  to  absolute 
nothingness,  seeks  to  give  it  character  by  way  of  contrast. 


6  ,    .       MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

"Not  this  ultimate  Fact  which  I  have  found,"  he  says,  "is 
unreal,  nothing,  but  all  the  world  of  sense  and  feeling  and 

(thought  with  which  I  contrast  it."  The  unknowable  reality  of  the 
mystic  must  receive  content;  it  cannot  receive  any  content  by 
positive  definition,  but  only  by  contrast.  Therefore  the  mystic 
says  that  all  that  is  real  it  is  not,  yet  it  alone  is  real;  hence 
all  that  we  know  is  unreal,  dream-stuff,  a  vast  illusion.  That 
is,  as  Prof.  Royce  has  pointed  out,2  the  mystic  seeks  to  give 
character  to  his  ultimate  zero  by  contrasting  it  with  the  real 
world,  which  must  become,  however,  for  that  purpose,  just 
another  zero,  and  "no  more  in  metaphysics  than  in  mathematics  is 
the  subtraction  of  one  zero  from  another  an  intelligible  process, 
giving  any  real  result."2  Mysticism  is  a  bad  philosophy. 

This  criticism  plainly  fails,  shoots  wide  of  the  mark.  Just 
because  it  is  so  clear,  so  obviously  valid,  it  is  impossible  that  the 
mystic  himself  should  not  have  recognized  it.  The  historical  fact 
is,  that  the  mystics,  for  the  most  part  of  the  keenest  of  logicians 
and  dialecticians,  did  recognize  this  criticism,  even  hailed  it  as 
a  manifestation  of  the  truth  of  their  mystery.  For  mysticism, 
unlike  other  bad  philosophies,  has  been  historically  deathless.  It 
has  not  fallen  to  pieces  of  its  own  inner  failure  in  logic.  All 
through  the  history  of  philosophy  runs  the  mystical  motive  like 
a  deep  undercurrent,  now  and  again  sweeping  to  the  surface  with 
unstemmable  force.  The  Indian  mystical  poems,  Plotinus  and  his 
followers,  Bernard,  Hugo  and  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  Eckhart, 
Suso,  Tauler,  Nicolaus  Cusanus,  the  Brothers  and  Sisters  of 
the  Free  Spirit,  Spinoza,  Schelling,  St.  Martin,  Theresa,  St. 
Francis  and  Madam  Guyon,  are  names  as  widely  separated  in 
time  as  in  philosophical  significance,  genius  and  view-point,  yet 
they  all  stand  as  evidences  of  the  fact  that  the  refutation  of  mys- 
ticism is  of  importance  only  to  those  who  are  not  mystics.  This  is 
not  because  the  mystic  is  dull-witted  or  insincere,  but  because  he 
himself,  the  heart  of  his  assurance,  has  somehow  not  been  touched. 
For  the  mystic  has,  as  an  actual  fact,  not  found  a  zero.  He 
acts  as  if  his  theory  were  not  true ;  he  places  tremendous  hypoth- 
eses in  the  world ;  he  declares  that  he  has  "a  conscious  relation 
to  the  most  Real" ;  that  he  sees  and  knows  all  things  as  they  truly 
are  through  his  discovered  experience-medium. 

The  mystic  must  then  intend,  not  to  make  a  speculative  doc- 
trine, but  to  express  some  unique  and  ultimate  and  anarchical 


THE   GENERAL    PROBLEM    OF    MYSTICISM.  7 

phase  of  experience — logical  analysis  and  refutation  cannot 
touch  him,  for  logic  cannot  destroy  facts. 

Yet  neither  can  the  mystic  be  ignored.  If  mysticism  is  expres- 
sive of  an  actual  fact  of  experience,  it  must  make  a  difference  to 
philosophy;  if  not,  the  problem  still  remains  as  to  how  mysti- 
cism, in  Prof.  Hocking's  words,  "has  created  the  illusion  that  his 
empty,  swept  and  garnished  dwelling  is  the  very  house  of  God." 

The  problem  of  mysticism  is,  then,  a  problem  in  human  experi- 
ence—  the  problem  of  what  aspect  of  experience  could  have  made 
keen  thinkers  find  the  roots  of  the  rational  in  the  non-rational, 
the  ultimate  metaphysical  certainties  on  alogical  grounds. 

In  what  field  is  one  to  look  for  a  solution  of  this  problem?  By 
what  norms  are  the  certainties  of  mysticism  to  be  judged  and 
evaluated,  its  meaning  for  an  understanding  of  human  truth- 
seeking  and  truth-getting  to  be  laid  bare? 


CHAPTER   II. 

SOME  RECENT  FORMULATIONS  OF  THIS  PROBLEM 

With  the  sweeping  away  of  the  mystic's  metaphysics,  and  yet 

with  the  fact  of  mysticism  as  strong  and  persistent  as  ever,  we 

are  led  to  believe  that  mysticism  is  primarily  an  experience  and 

not  a  ^metaphysics,  and  that  the  needed  attitude  toward  it,  is  an 

•ji  attempt  to  understandTt,  not  to  refute  it — for  an  experience  can 

V  never  be  refuted.     In  the  words  of  a  mystic  poem,  "The  sun 

beareth  witness  of  the  sun."3    An  experience  is,  in  the  last  resort, 

its  own  warrant. 

The  obvious  point  of  view  from  which  to  understand  any  phase 
of  human  experience  is  the  psychological  one.  Psychology,  if 
anything  can,  one  thinks,  ought  to  make  clear  to  us  just  what 
this  peculiar,  coercive,  ineffable  experience  of  the  mystic's  is,  and 
why  he  so  persistently  ascribes  to  it  ontological  certainty.  It  is 
with  this  problem  in  mind  that  many  recent  writers  have 
approached  their  subject  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology. 
Delacroix,4  de  Montmorand,5  Boutroux,6  Leuba,7  Picavet,8  Goix,9 
Probst-Biraben,10  Godferneaux11  have  all  made  minute  analyses 
of  the  mystic  consciousness.  Approaching  the  subject  as  they 
all  do  from  the  psychological  point  of  view,  they  yet  differ  from 
one  another  in  the  particular  angles  of  their  approach,  some  seek- 
ing the  key  to  the  problem  in  the  pathological,  some  in  the  psy- 
chophysical  and  some  in  the  introspective  way  of  treating  it. 

The  writers  who  approach  mysticism  from  what  might  be  called 
the  pathological  point  of  view  seem  to  me  to  approach  mysti- 
cism wholly  externally,  regarding  the  morbid  outward  phenomena 
which  are  often,  though  by  no  means  always,  present  in  mysticism, 
as  interchangeable  with  mysticism  itself.12  They  tend  to  identify 
magic  and .  mysticism,  table-knocking  and  mysticism,  any  and 
every  sort  of  vision-seeing  and  superstition  with  mysticism.  They 
attempt  to  "explain"  mysticism  by  calling  it  an  irruption  of  the 
sub-conscious,  auto-suggestion,  hysteria,  annihilation  of  the  will 
and  hypertrophy  of  the  attention,  or  else  annihilation  of  the  atten- 
tion and  hypertrophy  of  the  will,  eretheism  of  the  imagination, 
hypertension  of  the  vital  energy,  disassociation,  or  amnesia,  or 


SOME    RECENT   FORMULATIONS    OF   THIS    PROBLEM.  9 

the  coming  into  control  of  the  lower  centers.13  That  is,  they 
regard  mysticism  as  a  sort  of  mental  alienation,  having  a  definite 
type  of  morbid  manifestation.  Nordau,  for  instance,  on  this 
basis,  regards  mysticism  as  a  form  of  mental  degeneration  in 
which  the  characteristic  feature  is  the  unrestricted  play  of  the 
associative  process,  accompanied  always  by  a  strong  feeling 
element,  so  that  the  mystic  "imagines  he  divines  unknown  and 
inexplicable  relations  among  phenomena."1*  It  is  a  case  of  the 
ordinary  mechanism  of  thought  breaking  down  in  a  certain  defi- 
nite way,  under  the  influence  of  strong  emotional  factors. 
Cousin,15  in  his  definition  of  mysticism  as  a  substitution  of  ecstasy 
for  reason,  rapture  for  philosophy,  takes  substantially  this  view 
of  mysticism;  so  do  Lea,16  Jundt,17  Pfleiderer,18  and  others. 

The  limitations  of  this  point  of  view  are  obvious,  and  the  more 
recent  writers  on  the  psychology  of  mysticism  have  pointed  out, 
first,  that  a  treatment  of  mysticism  which  presupposes  its  patho- 
logical character  brings  in  a  great  deal  of  extraneous  matter; 
second,  that  the  pathological  accompaniments  of  mysticism  are 
accidental,  or  at  most  incidental  and  should  not  be  treated  as  the 
whole  of  mysticism,19  while  finally,  they  point  out  that  the  sub- 
conscious is  itself  more  in  need  of  illumination  than  in  a  position 
to  give  it.20 

The  second  way  of  approaching  mysticism  within  the  psycho- 
logical field  is  the  psycho-physical  point  of  view,  which  endeavors 
to  see  mysticism  from  the  inside  as  well  as  from  the  outside, 
which  considers  it  a  normal  manifestation  of  a  certain  type  of 
mind  and  seeks  to  ascertain  its  determining  characters. 

From  this  second  point  of  view,  the  answer  to  the  question  as 
to  where  and  how  the  ontological  certainties  of  mysticism  arise, 
is  found  generally  in  their  dependence  on  the  formal  conditions 
of  mind  and  body  in  a  trance  state.  Coe,21  for  instance,  in  his 
article  on  "The  Sources  of  the  Mystical  Revelation/'  examines 
the  confessions  of  mystics  in  James'  collection  and  others,  and 
comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the  reason  why  there  comes  from 
trance  practices,  from  the  psychological  effects  of  drugs,  from 
the  recurrent  spontaneous  obsession  of  "cosmic  consciousness," 
the  common  report  of  the  mingling  of  the  individual  self  in  a 
larger  world  of  spiritual  order  which  is  good  and  in  which  all 
mysteries  are  solved,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  these  mystic  con-' 
fessions  -come  from  a  homogeneous  group  of  minds,  whose 


10  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

extremely  high  degree  of.  suggestibility  is  sufficient  to  give  to 
ideas  the  force  of  present  experience  or  intuition,  and  that,  fur- 
ther, actual  experience  in  a  trance  gives  material  for  the 
peculiar  mystical  interpretation.  That  is,  the  mystics  are  people 
so  suggestible  that  they  regard  interpretations  of  experience  as 
actual  experience;  anything  can  become  to  them  a  direct  per- 
ception of  fact — they  see  the  devil  with  their  bodily  eyes,  etc. 
Being  then,  thus  highly  suggestible  and  being  subject  to  trances, 
the  actual  content  of  the  so-called  mystical  revelation  can  be 
accounted  for,  according  to  Coe,  by  the  actual  experience  con- 
tent of  the  trance.  There  is  in  a  trance,  first,  absolute  muscular 
relaxation.  This  brings  with  it  a  sense  of  being  out  of  the  body, 
a  loss  of  the  consciousness  of  the  subject-object  relation,  and  so 
of  the  sense  of  personality ;  and  the  change  from  tension  to  abso- 
lute relaxation  induces  also  an  agreeable  feeling-tone.  There  is, 
further,  a  persistent  narrowing  and  retraction  of  attention,  so 
that  the  experience  tends  to  be  ineffable,  because  of  this  empti- 
ness of  mental  content.  Coe  induced  trances  again  and  again 
in  normal  people,  and  found  always  these  factors;  according 
to  his  mind,  they  would  be  easily  enough  translated  by  the  mystic 
into  an  immediate  intuition  of  a  blessed  life  in  union  with  the 
ultimate  spiritual  being,  under  the  influence  of  auto-suggestion 
grown  habitual,  reflection,  tradition  and  instruction.22 

Leuba  also  approaches  the  problem  from  the  psycho-physiologi- 
cal point  of  view,23  and,  regarding  the  trance-state  as  the  essen- 
tial factor  of  mysticism,  deduces  from  it  the  ontological  certainty 
of  mysticism  in  a  different  way.  To  him,  to  say  that  mystics 
have  trances,  and  being  suggestible  people  they  hypostatize  these 
trances  into  objects  in  accordance  with  previous  ideas,  is  not 
enough  to  explain  the  passion  and  power  of  the  mystic.  On  the 
contrary,  the  peculiarity  of  the  mystical  type  is  that  certain  groups 
of  needs  are  especially  intense  in  them,  and  these  needs,  incapa- 
ble of  satisfaction  in  ordinary  ways,  either  on  account  of  temper- 
ament, or  environment,  or  the  predominance  of  religious  preju- 
dices, find  their  satisfaction  in  the  mystic  trance.  These  needs 
are,  first,  the  need  of  mental  peace.  The  mystic  is  a  distracted 
mind,  Leuba  says;  there  are  for  him  many  competing  objects  of 
attention  and  he  can  only  find  unity  and  peace  by  elimination, 
never  by  discrimination.  In  the  second  place,  the  mystics  are 
people  who  need  effective  support  from  outside — they  are,  as  a 


SOME    RECENT    FORMULATIONS    OF   THIS    PROBLEM.  II 

general  thing,  not  self-reliant  people.  A  third  need  is  the  need 
for  the  universalization  of_  action — the  feeling  that  beautiful 
things,  ~3eed^lHe^s~ought  to  belong  to  everybody.  The  mystic 
wishes  passionately  to  be  a  mere  vehicle  for  the  moral  law.  These 
are  three  of  the  needs  or  tendencies,  according  to  Leuba,  which, 
being  more  or  less  present  in  all  mystics,  find  their  satisfaction  in 
the  interpretation  the  mystic  gives  to  his  trance — union  with  the 
One,  support  by  the  consciousness  of  the  presence  of  God,  renewed 
impulse  to  good  and  universal  acts,  are  their  realization.  But 
Leuba  finds  the  most  essential  and  determining  need  a  fourth — 
the  desire  of  organic  enjoyment.  This  is  found,  Leuba  says, 
whether  consciously  or  not,  in  the  mystic  trance,  which  becomes 
for  Leuba  a  love-trance  with  the  idea  of  God  predominant. 
Other  writers  have  taken  up  this  point  of  view  in  regard  to 
mysticism,  that  it  is  essentially  erotamania,24  but  this  point  of 
view  is  very  vigorously  opposed  by  de  Montmorand25  and  by 
Prof.  Hocking,26  on  the  ground  that  the  mystical  experience  just 
is  a  total  satisfaction  of  all  the  impulses  and  desires  of  the 
man  who  has  it.  "In  mysticism,"27  says  Prof.  Hocking,  "all 
needs  are  understood  and  satisfied.  The  aim  is  to  unify  in  wish 
and  will  the  whole  moral  nature  of  man." 

Thus  Prof.  Hocking,28  de  Montmorand,29  and  Delacroix,30 
believe  that  the  trance-state  is  not  to  be  treated  as  a  single  fact 
containing  the  essence  of  mysticism,  which  may  be  analyzed  into 
its  satisfaction-elements  for  various  partial  needs,  but  that  these 
mystical  experiences  must  be  judged  serially,  as  a  process  of 
development,  and  in  connection  with  the  mystic's  other  states. 
They  use  as  a  category  for  manipulating  this  whole  of  the  mys- 
tic's consciousness,  the  principle  of  alternation.  Delacroix,  how- 
ever, accepts  it  merely  as  a  fact,31  that,  especially  at  the  early 
stages  of  a  mystic's  career,  this  phenomenon  of  marked  alterna- 
tion between  states  of  insight  and  states  of  ordinary  conscious 
activity  do  occur — he  believes  that  this  alternation  is  contrary 
to  the  ideal  of  mysticism,  that  it  is  something  to  be  overcome. 

De  Montmorand,  however,  sees  a  deeper  significance  than 
that  in  this  fact  of  the  mystic's  life.32  There  are,  he  says,  alter- 
nations whose  members  are  not  simply  antithetical  and  successive, 
but  whose  members  grow  out  of  one  another;  he  instances  rest 
and  action.  The  alternating  states  in  the  mystic's  life  are  mutu- 
ally determining,  he  would  say,  each  receives  its  character  from 


12  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

the  other — as  the  mystic  raises  himself,  ascetically  and  morally,  to 
his  mystic  experience,  so  after  this  experience  his  active  life 
receives  a  new  moral  impetus  and  fervor. 

Prof.  Hocking  develops  this  principle  of  alternation  still  fur- 
ther,33 believing  that  mysticism  is  a  practical  attitude,  a  will  to 
worship,  and  that  the  mystical  experience  is  an  incident  in  attain- 
ing a  new  psychical  level  in  conformity  with  this  motive.  These 
experiences  which  mark  new  levels,  come  in  a  sort  of  irregular, 
unperiodic  rhythm,  in  a  fundamental  kind  of  growth,  so  that  one 
stage  is  assimilated  so  to  speak,  and  the  next  experience  is  added 
to  that.  That  is,  the  mystic  is  somehow  a  different  man  prac- 
tically after  his  mystic  experience  of  union,  and  he  keeps  on 
being  different.  To  Prof.  Hocking,  the  reason  for  this  psycho- 
logical alternation  is  to  be  found  in  an  epistemological  principle 
of  alternation  at  the  basis  of  it;34  its  criterion  is  to  be  found 
in  an  ethical  evaluation  of  it.35 

There  remains  to  consider,  in  the  psychological  field,  what  has 
been  called  the  introspective  approach  to  mysticism36 — meaning 
here  by  introspection  not  the  examination  of  one's  own  mind,  but 
the  examination  of  the  mystic's  mind  wholly  from  the  inside,  on 
the  basis  of  his  own  introspection,  with  all  physical  accompani- 
ments disregarded.  From  this  point  of  view  little  more  is 
attempted  than  an  actual  simplification  of  the  mystic's  account  of 
the  road  he  travels,  checked  always  by  reference  to  the  fruits 
of  the  mystic  experience.  Thus  Delacroix,  writing  from  this 
point  of  view,37  finds  the  mystic  life  a  development  in  three 
stages — the  first  the  stage  in  which  the  mystic,  having  achieved 
union,  receives  "divine  favors"  from  God,  is  absorbed  wholly  in 
the  interests  and  excitements  of  the  new  level  of  life.  Delacroix 
i  calls  this  stage  the  stage  of  "expansion"  or  "divine  hypnosis." 
The  second  stage  is  that  mystically-named  the  "darkjnight  of  the 
[  soul,"  when  the  soul  is  felt  to  be  kept  from  union  with  God  by 
obstacles ;  the  third  stage  is  that  of  a  serene  and  powerful 
activity,  in  which  union  with  God  and  ethical  activity  are  both 
present.  Boutroux,  also  from  this  point  of  view,  arranges  the 
mystical  development  in  a  little  fuller  order38 — (i)  he  says,  is 
the  period  of  longing,  of  half-unconscious  grasp  of  the  God- 
idea,  (2)  the  stage  at  which  this  idea  comes  into  clear  conscious- 
ness and  the  demand  is  put  upon  the  soul  for  transformation  into 
conformity  with  this  idea,  by  the  means  of  purification  and 


SOME    RECENT   FORMULATIONS    OF   THIS    PROBLEM.  13 

asceticism,  (3)  is  the  period  of  ecstasy,  of  experienced  union, 
(4)  is  the  reflection  of  this  stage  on  the  active  life — there  comes 
a  new  orientation  in  both  judgment  and  conduct,  and  (5)  in  the 
final  stage,  this  life  is  developed  and  realized  in  all  its  fullness — in 
loving  God,  the  mystic  loves  the  whole  creation. 

So  much  for  the  purely  psychological  part  of  the  psychology  of 
mysticism.  The  significant  thing  is,  that  the  psychologists,  once 
they  have  got  their  phenomena  before  us,  immediately  desert  their 
psychological  point  of  view  in  seeking  to  evaluate  it.  I  have  been 
obliged  to  give  often  only  the  beginnings  of  so-called  psycholog- 
ical discussions,  in  order  to  give  the  purely  psychological  data. 
Thus  the  pathologists  dispose  of  mysticism  as  of  no  value,  because 
it  is  purely  auto-suggestion,39  etc.,  making  some  sort  of  ontologi- 
cal  appeal ;  thus  the  examiner  of  mysticism  from  a  psycho-physi- 
cal point  of  view  appeals  frankly  to  the  ethical  outcome  of 
mysticism  for  its  evaluation,  as  Prof.  Hocking40  and  Goix41  do, 
saying  that  mysticism  cannot  be  merely  of  no  value  at  all,  since 
it  does  as  a  matter  of  fact  result  (in  Prof.  Hocking's  words)  in 
"the  shattering  of  the  moral  nature  and  the  reshaping  of  it  a 
little  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire"  ;42  especially  the  psychologists 
who  regard  mysticism  so  to  speak  from  the  inside  are  insistent 
about  a  moral  criterion  for  it,  saying  that  if  it  is  monoideism  or 
auto-suggestion,  its  worth  lies  in  the  value  of  its  single  idea  ;43  or 
like  Goix  raising  the  question  of  racial  suggestion  and  its  tremen- 
dous ontological  importance  for  human  destiny,  as  implying  a 
common  will.44 

What  then,  shall  be  said  of  the  psychological  point  of  view  as 
a  means  of  understanding  mysticism  ?  One  must  say  first,  I  think, 
that  its  accepted  positive  results — namely,  that  the  mystic  experi- 
ence  is  a  normal  experience,  taking  place  in  subjects  widely 

I  removed  in  intellectual,  aesthetic,  and  moral  vigor,  and  in 
the  healthy  or  morbid  states  of  their  organisms,  though  all 

f  probably  higher  suggestible  to  ideas — further,  that  the  mystic 
experience  is  cumulative,  rythmic,  and  results  in  a  tremendous 
incentive  to  action,  that  it  is  noetic,  illuminating,  and  of  abso- 
lute authority  for  the  subject  attaining  it, — are  of  very  great 
importance  to  an  understanding  of  mysticism ; — but  that  the  nega- 
tive results  of  a  study  of  this  kind  are  of  even  greater  importance. 
For  on  the  negative  side  psychology  shows  that  all  these  con- 
comitant psychological  phenomena  are  not  really  mysticism ;  they 


14  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

are  no  more  to  be  confounded  with  mysticism  than  the  psychical 
states  of  a  genius  are  to  be  confounded  with  genius — psychology 
persistently  pushes  us  beyond  itself  for  a  true  understanding  of 
mysticism,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  facts  cited  above,  that  as  soon 
as  psychology  tries  to  evaluate  mysticism,  to  show  its  signifi- 
V  cance  or  lack  of  it,  it  turns  outside  of  itself,  to  norms  of  ontology, 
or  of  ethics,  or  of  religion. 

That  is,  psychology  seems  to  give  up  the  problem  of  the  unique- 
ness of  mysticism — it  can  qualify  mysticism  and  it  can  describe 
its  genesis,  but  on  its  own  confession  it  cannot  go  further — it 
cannot  tell  what  meaning  mysticism,  as  having  happened,  has, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  human  values.  In  a  word,  psychology 
has  the  right  to  describe,  but  not  to  interpret,  its  phenomena. 

In  the  further  attempt  to  get  at  the  heart  of  mysticism,  at  its 
fundamental  drive,  an  attempt  growing  out  of  the  psychological 
analyses,  scholars  have  turned  to  the  motive  of  mysticism, 
and  have  found  that  motive  to  be  an  ethical  one.  According 
to  this  point  of  view,  mysticism  can  only  be  understood  and 
.  interpreted  in  the  light  of  its  ethics — it  is,  in  its  core,  the  ethical 
force  in  man,  moral  enthusiasm.  Picavet45  takes  this  point 
of  view,  and  Recejac.46  The  latter  says  "mysticism  is  without 
form  or  support  anywhere  except  in  the  moral  realm."47  It  is 
easy  enough  to  maintain  this  view.  Against  men  like  Paul,48 
who  point  out  that  ethics  is  primarily  a  thing  of  the  phenomenal 
world  and  that  mysticism,  in  denying  that  world  denies  also  the 
possibility  of  ethical  action,  or  Nash,49  who  says  that  mysti- 
cism in  being  unique  and  individualistic  destroys  the  active  and 
social  values,  or  even  against  the  more  specific  criticism  that  the 
great  mystics,  in  making  the  virtues  means  to  an  end,  and  the 
ultimate  end  transcendent  and  free  from  moral  necessities,  de- 
stroy moral  values,50  it  is  easy  from  this  point  of  view  to 
point  out  that  the  mystics  have  nevertheless  been  men  of  intense 
ethical  activity,  and  the  very  fact  that,  in  spite  of  the  quietistic 
and  anti-social  features  of  their  doctrine,  the  mystics  have  not 
ignored  the  phenomenal  world,  have  seen  themselves  compelled 
by  an  inner  necessity  to  go  out  and  make  disciples,  as  was  Buddha 
for  instance,51  shows  that  there  is  in  mysticism  a  tremendous 
ethical  drive,  so  strong  that  it  can  break  down  even  its  own 
formal  tenets.  It  is  the  old  point  that  mysticism  is  primarily  a 
mode  of  life  rather  than  a  mode  of  reflection  about  life ;  and  the 


SOME    RECENT    FORMULATIONS    OF   THIS    PROBLEM.  15 

further  point  is  here  added  that  this  mode  of  life  is  fundamentally  / 
one  of  ethical  striving,  that  mysticism  is  inextricably  connected 
with  ethical  presuppositions.  This  point  of  view  can  also  be 
abundantly  borne  out  by  illustrations  of  the  moral  fervor  of  the 
mystics;  their  stress  on  character,  on  social  obligation,  on  indi- 
vidual worth.  Eckhart  says:  "I  am  just  as  necessary  to  God  as 
God  is  to  me"52 — and  the  mystic  shows  that  he  has  found  that 
he  is  something,  not  nothing.  Tauler  says:  "One  can  spin, 
another  can  make  shoes,  and  they  are  all  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
I  tell  you"53 — and  emphasizes  social  activity  as  a  religious  duty. 
An  example  of  the  ethical  approach  to  mysticism  is  seen  in  Pea- 
body54  in  an  article  on  "Mysticism  and  Modern  Life"  in  the  Har- 
vard Theological  Review.  His  point  is,  that  if  the  mystic  does 
descend  from  the  heights  to  the  task,  he  brings  with  him  a  rare 
endowment  of  power,  and  that  he  nearly  always  does  so  descend. 
He  examines  the  productivity  of  the  mystical  inspiration  in  the 
Quakers,  and  instances  the  work  of  George  Fox,  and  the  fact  that 
the  Quakers  of  Germantown  submitted  the  first  official  religious 
protest  against  slavery  (in  1688)  ;  that  in  1783  a  petition  for  the 
abolishment  of  the  slave  trade  in  England  was  presented  to  the 
House  of  Commons  by  Quakers ;  that  Quakers  were  foremost  in 
advancing  the  cause  of  free  undenominational  education  of  both 
sexes;  that  they  were  first  in  the  work  for  the  negro,  Indian, 
and  Oriental  in  our  country,  and  for  the  abolishment  of  war; 
that  Elizabeth  Fry,  famous  for  her  work  in  English  prisons,  was 
a  Quaker;  and  that  the  impetus  to  John  Bright's  work  against 
the  bread-tax,  for  popular  rights  and  the  widening  of  the  fran- 
chise, came  from  this  same  so-called  quietistic  Quaker  doctrine. 
Mysticism  is  not  only  consistent  with  action,  he  concludes,  but 
it  gives  to  it  a  force,  a  composure.  "To  feel  one's  self  an  instru- 
ment makes  one  do  one's  work  with  a  keen  edge."  Again,  Miss 
Underbill,55  writing  from  this  point  of  view,  says:  "The  true 
mystic  quest  may  as  well  be  fulfilled  in  the  market  as  in  the  clois- 
ter ;  by  Joan  of  Arc  on  the  battlefield  as  by  Simon  of  Stylites  on 
his  pillar.  The  real  achievements  of  Christian  mysticism  are 
to  be  seen  in  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna  regenerating  her  native  city, 
Joan  of  Arc  leading  the  armies  of  France,  Ignatius  creating  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  or  Fox  giving  life  to  the  Society  of  Friends."55 
I  think  that  this  point  of  view  is  again  insufficient  to  give  the 
total  fact  of  mysticism.  It  is  very  true  that  the  mystics  for  the 


1 6  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

most  part  have  been  ethically  active  people,  being  perhaps  the 
"force  that  has  preserved  religion  from  formalism,  social  life 
from  entire  hypocrisy,"  in  Inge's  words,  but  to  seek  to  know  mys- 
ticism entirely  by  its  fruits  seems  to  me  misleading.  For  what 
can  such  a  point  of  view  say  really  to  the  Brothers  and  Sisters 
.of  the  Free  Spirit,  who  nourished  so  extensively  in  the  I4th  and 
1 5th  centuries  and  whose  one  claim  was  that,  having  had  their 
mystical  experience,  they  were  henceforth  beyond  morality56 — 
being  one  with  God,  whatever  they  willed  to  do,  moral  or  not 
moral,  criminal  or  holy,  was  God's  will?  Or  to  Angele  de 
Foligno,57  congratulating  herself  on  the  death  of  her  mother, 
husband  and  children,  since  they  were  but  hindrances  to  her  per- 
fect enjoyment  of  God?  Or  even  to  the  "diabolical  mystics,"  as 
James  call  them,58  such  as  Forres,  who,  having  penetrated  to  the 
heart  of  things,  brings  back  the  report  that  it  is  evil  and  not 
good?  And  even  granting  that  all  these  examples  are  aberra- 
tions of  mysticism,  not  true  mysticism  at  all,  we  still  have  the 
fact  of  the  strong  personal  element  of  the  mystic's  longing  unex- 
plained. The  mystic  never  wants  primarily  a  new  order  of 
things  in  the  world,  a  better  civic  regulation — these  are  rather 
results,  which  spring  from  the  illumination  of  his  spiritual 
nature  which  he  has  received  in  what  he  names  direct  com- 
munion with  God — the  working  out,  so  to  speak,  of  the  sur- 
plus energy  which  he  seems  to  have  received  in  his  mystical 
experience.  The  ethical  activity  is  the  demand  that  the 
world  be  transformed  in  conformity  to  the  mystic's  inner  experi- 
ence, rather  than  itself  the  motive  of  that  experience.  Any 
study  of  mysticism  wholly  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  how- 
ever valuable  it  may  be  for  exemplifying  a  certain  driving  power 
and  energy  that  seems  to  spring  from  the  mystic  experience,  is 
bound  to  be  a  partial,  and  sometimes,  a  misleading  view — as  if 
implying  that  all  social  reformers  had  to  be  mystics,  or  all  mystics 
social  reformers.  It  is  this  spiritual  illumination  itself  that  one 
wants  to  get  at,  and  not  alone  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychol- 
ogy, which  is  inadequate  to  interpret  it,  nor  from  the  point  of 
view  of  ethics,  which  leaves  it  aside  as  a  dim,  unessential  X 
in  the  background,  but  from  some  point  of  view,  which,  having 
norms  of  its  own,  can  understand  and  interpret  what  it  is  that 
takes  place  in  the  mystical  experience,  and  what  meaning  it  has 
for  us. 


SOME.  RECENT   FORMULATIONS   OF   THIS    PROBLEM.  17 

Such  a  point  of  view  would  seem  to  be  the  religious  one ;  and 
from  this  point  of  view  much  illumination  has  been  thrown  on 
the  subject  of  mysticism.  "Mysticism,"  says  Prof.  Hocking, 
"is  worship,"59  and  again,  "Mysticism  is  the  original,  untamed, 
God-seeking  element."60  For  Prof.  Hocking,  mysticism  and 
religion  are  almost  interchangeable  terms  ;61  the  reality  of  religion 
is  its  mystical  element,  its  felt  conscious  union  with  the  most 
Real,  while  mysticism  cannot  be  understood  apart  from  this 
intense,  personal,  religious  element.  Inge  also  takes  this  point 
of  view,62  though  in  a  somewhat  modified  form.  "Spiritual 
things,"  he  says,  "must  be  spiritually  discerned;  the  evidence 
for  the  truth  of  religion  is  the  religious  experience."63  This 
religious  experience  is  to  Inge  synonymous  with  mysticism,  and 
from  this  point  of  view  he  discusses  the  relation  of  mysticism 
to  institutionalism.  The  point  for  us  is,  that  both  religion  and 
mysticism  if  separated  from  each  other  would  be  for  him  prac- 
tically devoid  of  meaning.  Thus  the  study  of  mysticism  from 
the  religious  point  of  view  is  not  devotional  nor  intended  to 
become  so;  it  is  an  attempt  to  get  at  the  meaning  of  mysticism 
out  of  its  purest  forms,  and  to  examine  the  ontological  messages 
of  mysticism  in  the  light  of  religious  ideas — to  find  out  what 
"mysticism  means  and  may  add  to  our  knowledge  of  God,"  "not 
as  a  speculative  system,  but  as  an  existent  fact."64 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this  approach  to  mysticism  typifies  a 
very  true  aspect  of  mysticism — that  it  is,  in  its  highest  unfold- 
ing, as  well  as  in  its  deepest  motive,  religious.  But  nevertheless 
to  identify  mysticism  forthwith  with  religion,  even  to  seek  to  see 
it  exclusively  from  a  religious  point  of  view,  is  at  once  too  wide 
and  too  narrow.  Too  wide ;  for  such  a  vast  ocean  of  tradition, 
and  instruction,  and  inherited  creeds  and  age-old  God-ideas,  come 
into  religion,  mingling  so  inextricably  with  the  mystical  experi- 
ence in  it,  that  it  makes  the  problem  of  deciding  where  the  unique, 
coercive  mystical  experience  of  communion  with  the  Godhead 
ends  and  where  the  interpretation  of  this  experience,  an  interpre- 
tation necessarily  colored  and  perhaps  distorted  by  the  environ- 
mental religious  ideas,  begins,  one  almost  impossible  of  solution. 
Too  narrow;  for  there  are  certainly  experiences  of  sudden 
insight  outside  of  religious  experience,65  which  are  not  distin- 
guishable from  the  mystical  religious  experience  by  any  namable 
feature,  except  that  they  just  are  not  religious — are  not  concerned 


1 8  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

with  the  Godhead  as  such  for  their  object.  Must  one  throw 
out  of  account  all  so-called  secular  mystical  experiences?  Such 
as  the  experience  of  genius,66  for  instance,  or  of  the  logician — Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell  says,67  that  in  purely  logical  realms,  it  is  insight 
or  intuition,  a  sudden  illumination,  that  arrives  at  what  is  really 
new — that  the  function  of  reason  is  to  confute  or  confirm  this 
intuition,  which  confuting  or  confirming  consists,  however,  in 
setting  it  into  agreement  or  disagreement  with  other  beliefs 
no  less  instinctive — must  one  disregard  all  such  testimony  to 
seek  for  the  meaning  of  mysticism  purely  in  the  religious  realm? 
It  seems  to  me  that  one  ought  to  be  able  to  find  a  point  of  view, 
which,  while  expressing  the  uniqueness  of  mysticism,  would  yet 
enable  one  to  study  with  its  aid  all  manifestations  of  mysti- 
cism— whether  in  the  mere  germ  or  in  its  highest  development — 
and  that  only  from  such  a  point  of  view  could  the  real  meaning 
of  mysticism,  its  unique  contribution  to  the  total  meaning  of 
life,  be  seen — and  that  all  the  formulations  of  the  problem  consid- 
ered in  this  chapter  have  shown  themselves  inadequate  to  this 
purpose. 


CHAPTER  III. 

MYSTICISM  AN  EPISTEMOLOGICAL  PROBLEM. 

The  last  chapter  attempted  to  show  that  the  study  of  mysti- 
cism from  the  metaphysical,  and  psychological,  and  ethical,  and 
religious  view-points,  while  it  has  made  many  contributions  of 
great  value  to  the  understanding  of  the  pathological  or  normal 
conditions  of  mysticism,  of  its  ethical  results,  and  of  its  high  frui- 
tion in  religion,  has  yet  somehow  tended  to  leave  mysticism  itself 
aside.  The  difficulty  was  that  in  explaining  mysticism  from  these 
points  of  view,  either  only  one  aspect  of  mysticism  seemed  to  be 
considered,  and  this  consideration  was  a  contradiction  to  other 
phases  of  mysticism,  or  extraneous  elements  and  attendant  fea- 
tures of  mysticism  were  examined  as  mysticism  itself,  so  that 
one  lost  all  hint  of  the  unique  meaning  of  mysticism. 

What  point  of  view  can  one  find  which  shall  at  the  same  time 
be  broad  enough  to  enable  one  to  study  all  its  manifestations 
serially,  from  the  germ  to  its  highest  development,  and  narrow 
enough  to  present  the  unique  contribution  which  mysticism  makes 
to  the  total  meaning  of  life?  One  wishes  to  find  what  is  at 
once  uniquely  and  universally  true  of  mysticism,  for  only  so  can 
one  find  an  inner  understanding  of  mysticism. 

James,  in  his  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  gives  four 
"marks"  as  he  calls  them,  of  the  mystic  state  of  consciousness, 
and  of  these  only  two  seem  to  him  to  be  essential.68  These  two 
are  the  ineffability  of  mysticism  and  its~peculiar  noetic  quality  of 
sudden  illumination.  The  first  of  these  characters  is  not  unique ; 
it  makes  mysticism  like  all  other  experience  (though  to  a  greater 
degree)  in  being  ultimately  incommunicable.  Mysticism  is  not  \ 
unique  in  not  being  for  all — for  color  and  music,  for  instance, 
to  take  obvious  examples,  must  have  the  same  character  as  long 
as  colorblind  people  and  people  with  no  ear  for  music,  exist. 

But  James'  fourth  mark,  that  of  peculiar  noetic  quality  of 
direct  illumination,  does  give  a  suggestion  of  a  unique  character- 
ization of  all  states  regarded  as  mystical.  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell's 
definition  of  mysticism69  as  "belief  in  insight  as  against  dis- 
cursive reason,  in  a  way  of  wisdom,  sudden,  penetrating,  coer- 


20  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

cive,"  bears  out  this  suggestion.  So  do  the  majority  of  the  schol- 
ars of  mysticism,  whether  directly  or  indirectly,  scornfully  or 
sincerely,  whatever  else  they  hold  concerning  mysticism,  acknowl- 
edge that  it  is  in  some  way  an  assertion  of  the  knowledge 
of  experience  as  against  ideational  knowledge.  Thus  Hinton70 
says,  "Mysticism  is  an  assertion  of  a  means  of  knowing  that 
must  not  be  tried  by  ordinary  rules  of  evidence ;  it  is  the 
claiming  of  authority  for  our  own  impressions,"  and  Prof.  Hock- 
ing, after  identifying  mysticism  with  worship,  says :  "True  wor- 
ship will  issue  in  true  knowledge,  as  its  essential  result  and 
aim,"71  or  to  go  to  the  opposite  extreme,  Pfleiderer  says  :  "Mysti- 
cism is  the  immediate  feeling  of  the  unity  of  the  self  with 
God  ...  in  this  God-intoxication,  the  subject  knows  himself  to 
be  in  possession  of  the  highest  and  fullest  truth ;  but  this  truth 
is  only  possessed  in  the  quite  undeveloped,  simple  and  bare  form 
of  monotonous  feeling  .  .  .  "72  or  finally,  Ribot,  "The  ecstasy 
presupposes  the  exaltation  of  the  intelligence;  it  is  the  extreme 
activity  of  the  intelligence  concentrated  on  a  unique  idea."73 
One  might  multiply  these  quotations  indefinitely,  but  even  so 
many  seem  to  indicate  that  scholars,  from  whatever  angle,  for 
whatever  purpose,  and  to  whatever  result,  they  have  studied 
the  mystic  states  of  consciousness,  have  at  least  recognized, 
though  often  considering  that  recognition  as  worthless,  that 
w  mysticism  always  asserts  that  one  can  know  as  immediate  fact 
what  seems  to  be  known  only  as  idea.  The  suggestion  here  is, 
that  if  you  take  away  this  element  of  direct  illumination  from 
any  man's  doctrine,  you  have  at  least  nothing  mystical  left ;  add 
it  to  any  man's  doctrine  and  you  have  evidence  of  a  mystical 
experience. 

The  fact  that  this  tremendous  central  assumption  of  a  tran- 
scendent way  of  knowing  is  present  in  all  mysticism-— alike  in 
degenerate,  pathological  mysticism,  in  antinomian  mysticism,  and 
in  the  sublimest  religious  mysticism,  justifies,  I  think,  a  study 
of  mysticism  from  the  epistemological  point  of  view. 

And  if  it  is  objected  that  mysticism  is  so  much  deeper  and  more 
fundamental,  so  much  more  primitive  a  thing  than  the  assertion 
of  a  cognitive  experience,  that  such  a  treatment  must  necessarily 
falsify  its  object,  we  may  yet  meet  this  objection.  This  objec- 
tion would  state  that  mysticism  is  deeper  than  any  thought  or 
thinking  could  possibly  be — that  it  is  the  assertion,  not  of  the  satis- 


MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM.  21 

faction  of  any  one  set  of  needs,  but  of  a  total  value,  the  sajis- 1  \X 
faction  of  all  needs,  in  short,  of  God.  Now,  quite  apart  from 
the  question  as  to  whether  mysticism  really  is  always  God-seek- 
ing— a  question  already  touched  upon — one  may  question  further 
as  to  whether  the  appellation  of  the  mystic's  object  as  a  "total 
value"  is  one  quite  narrowly  enough  accurate  to  further  insight 
into  the  nature  of  mysticism.  For  the  single  case  of  the  self- 
inflicted  horrible  tortures  of  Suso,74  the  many  cases  of  mystical 
asceticism,  are  surely  sufficient  to  show  that  what  the  mystic  often 
finds  is  not  so  much  satisfaction  of  all  his  needs  as  an  irresistible 
command  to  repudiate  some  of  those  needs  at  whatever  cost. 
But  if  it  is  not  the  satisfaction  of  physical  needs  which  has  been 
found,  of  what  sort  are  the  needs  satisfied  ?  They  must  be  emo- 
tional and  cognitive;  and  primarily  cognitive.  For  a  value,  not 
total,  but  supreme  and  demanding  and  shattering  of  the  lesser 
demands,  has  been  found,  and  it  is  most  demanding  precisely 
upon  those  mystics  who  have  most  passionately  sought  for  truth- 
value,  for  satisfaction  in  knowing.  Could  the  value  be  a  supreme 
one,  a  commanding  one — even  a  total  one, — unless  it  were 
primarily  a  cognitive  value,  for  men  who  through  and  through 
were  seekers  of  knowledge — for  the  early  Indian  mystics,  for 
Plato,  for  Plotinus?  The  great  mystics  are  almost  universally 
brilliant  logicians  and  dialecticians,  whose  propulsion  comes  from 
the  puzzles  and  contradictions  of  the  subject-object  relation. 
The  whole  of  Hindu  mysticism,  as  seen  in  the  Upanishads  and 
the  Shankara  is  an  analysis  of  this  relation  ;75  it  starts  with  the 
relation  of  the  knower  to  the  known  and  seeks  the  ultimate  mean- 
ing of  that  relation.  Its  outcome  is  the  offering  of  salvation 
through  knowledge — of  salvation  from  the  endless  pursuit  of 
things  through  knowledge  which  penetrates  the  illusion  of  the 
world.  Plato's  mysticism  is  rooted  in  the  epistemological  prob- 
lem;76 that  of  Plotinus  is  bound  to  a  searching  and  immanent 
criticism  of  the  knowing  process.77  So  of  all  the  greater  mystics, 
whom  alone  this  objection  considers — they  found  indeed  a 
supreme,  a  demanding  value,  but  this  cannot  be  less  than,  in 
some  very  intimate  and  peculiar  sense,  a  cognitive  one. 

A  second  objection  to  the  justifiability  of  an  epistemological 
treatment  of  mysticism  would  say  that,  instead  of  being  inade- 
quate in  scope,  this  point  of  view  is  too  wide.  Cognition,  it 
would  say,  is  being  used  too  widely  and  vaguely — to  mean  little 


22  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

more  than  the  assertion  of  belief  in  an  object  as  true,  or  as 
meaning  merely  any  conscious  relation.  Knowledge  is  too  specific 
and  definite  a  term  to  be  applied  here,  this  objection  would  say; 
it  should  be  kept  to  be  applied  to  the  realm  of  ideas — any  real 
experience,  say  of  love,  or  of  hate,  could  by  the  use  of  this  ter- 
minology be  called  "knowledge"  or  "cognition."  Mysticism  is 
primarily  a  matter  of  feeling,  of  emotional  value.  This  objection 
could  bring  forward  many  sayings  from  the  mystics  themselves 
to  support  its  contention.  As,  for  instance,  from  St.  John  of 
the  Cross :  "Entertain  me  no  more  with  any  knowledge  of  thee,  or 
with  thy  communications  or  impressions  of  thy  grandeur,  for 
these  do  but  increase  my  longing  and  the  pain  of  thy  absence; 
for  thy  presence  alone  can  satisfy  my  will  and  desire/'78  Or 
from  the  Mystica  Theologica  of  Dionysius :  "Do  thou,  my  dear 
Timothy,  diligently  give  thyself  to  mystical  contemplation,  leave 
the  senses  and  the  operations  of  the  intellect  and  all  things  sensi- 
ble and  intelligible,  and  all  things  that  are  and  things  that  are 
not,  that  thou  mayest  arise  by  ways  above  knowledge  to  him  that 
is  above  all  knowledge  and  all  being."79  From  Ruysbroek,80  from 
Madame  Guyon,81  even  from  the  more  speculative  and  conscious 
mystics — one  might  say  from  all  without  exception — it  is  possible 
to  find  passages  to  support  this  view — that,  in  the  words  of 
Goethe,82  mysticism  is  merely  "scholastic  of  the  heart,  dialectic 
of  the  feelings." 

Further,  the  asserted  inarticulateness  of  mysticism  goes  to 
support  this  view.  We  find  all  mystics  declaring  their  experience 
not  translatable  into  words  and  ideas.  We  find  Angele  de  Foligno 
interrupting  her  amanuensis  with  the  words:  "I  blaspheme, 
brother,  I  blaspheme.  All  that  I  have  said  is  nothing — and  there 
is  nothing  that  I  can  say."83  Yet  even  here  have  we  not  the 
assertion  of  a  vision,  of  a  felt  insight  into  reality,  of  experienced 
truth?  Must  not  even  here  the  cognitive  value  be  not  only 
included  in  the  emotional  value  but  given  as  the  basis  of  it  ?  For 
as  a  matter  of  history,  we  find  the  mystics  never  the  people  who 
advocate  the  will  to  believe  on  the  ground  of  emotional  desires 
t  and  experiences,  but  always  we  find  them  impregnable  in  their 
-"I  know."  Just  here,  even,  in  their  assertion  of  transcendence 
over  ordinary  knowing  we  find  the  impregnability  of  their  imme- 
diate insight  most  unassailable — for  it  is  impervious  to  the  attacks 
of  ideational  knowledge.  Further,  one  finds  just  as  strong  claims, 


MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM.  23 

and  more  consistent  and  self-dependent  ones,  that  the  object 
found  is  of  cognitive,  as  that  it  is  of  emotional  value.  One  may 
compare  the  passion  of  Suso84  or  of  St.  Theresa85  for  the  truth, 
for  the  objectively  sure,  which  led  them  to  test  and  even  to  repu- 
diate some  of  their  own  transports — or  one  may  compare  such 
words  as  these  from  Meister  Eckhart:  "The  truth  is  something 
so  noble,  that  if  God  himself  wished  to  turn  away  from  it,  I 
would  hold  to  it  and  leave  God ;  I  am  a  priest  of  the  truth,  I  am 
in  its  employ,  I  have  made  myself  bound  for  all  time  to  do  and 
to  dare  and  to  suffer  everything  for  it/'86  Once  again  one  must 
say  that  the  drive  of  the  mystic  is  not  toward  reforming  the  world, 
nor  toward  letting  himself  go  in  an  ecstasy  of  emotion,  but  it  is 
a  search  for  the  truth.  Further,  the  search  itself  it  is  very  hard 
to  differentiate  ultimately  from  other  types  of  thinking,  as  this 
objection  would  have  us  do.  In  Prof.  Hocking's  words,  "Mys- 
ticism takes  on  the  aspect  of  a  more  intense,  deliberate,  and  pur- 
poseful thinking.  The  mystic,  as  any  thinker,  must  remove 
himself  from  all  distracting  appearances,  check  the  habitual 
ideas,  for  the  time  being  lose  himself  in  his  object,  and  identify 
its  being  with  his  own."87  The  aim  of  the  mystic  is  cognitive — 
toward  a  recognition  of  an  ultimate  truth  and  reality ;  his  claim 
is  cognitive,  that  he  has  absolute  intellectual  as  well  as  emo- 
tional, certainty  of  this  object;  his  fashion  of  attaining  truth  is 
cognitive,  an  immediate  flash  of  insight — without,  to  be  sure, 
palpable  roots  in  other  insights.  And  if  the  objection  to  our 
point  of  view  which  we  are  here  considering,  says  at  this  point 
that  it  is  the  immediacy  of  the  mystical  insight  which  makes  it 
just  not  a  matter  of  cognition,  for  cognition  must  be  kept  to 
mean  the  acquisition  and  growth  of  ideas  by  means  of  other 
ideas — that  a  broadening  of  this  term  to  take  in  the  sudden  mys- ' 
tical  insights,  makes  it  so  vague  as  to  deprive  it  of  profitable 
connotation,  and  that,  whatever  may  be  the  purpose  and  the  * 
claim  of  the  mystic,  just  this  fact  that  the  way  in  which  he 
attains  his  object  is  not  strictly  a  cognitive  way,  is  enough  to 
remove  it  from  epistemological  problems,  our  epistemological 
point  of  view  for  an  understanding  of  mysticism  may  still  be 
justified,  and  that  by  granting,  for  the  time,  the  whole  of  its 
position  to  this  objection. 

For,  if  we  grant,  for  the  time,  that  mysticism  is  not  strictly, 
or  at  least  not  narrowly,  in  the  limited  sense  in  which  this  objec- 


24  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

tion  wishes  to  use  the  word,  as  applying  only  to  ideation,  a  cog- 
nitive matter,  still  one  is  forced  to  treat  it  from  the  epistemo- 
logical  standpoint.  For  the  fact  of  mysticism  in  the  world  is 
the  fact  of  the  apparently  insolvable  paradox  which  lies  at  the 
heart  of  all  ideational  knowledge.88  The  logic  of  the  paradox 
to  which  the  mystic  calls  attention,  is,  as  we  shall  see,  unas- 
sailed  when  his  solution  of  it,  in  the  form  of  his  philosophical 
speculation,  is  rejected.  To  reject  an  explanation  is  not  to  deny 
the  facts  which  it  was  intended  to  explain,  and  in  this  case  it  is 
the  existence  of  just  the  paradox  of  which  the  mystic  is  con- 
scious in  its  sharpest  form,  which  is  the  heart  of  the  epistemo- 
logical  problem. 

This  paradox  of  the  mystic's  may  be  brought  out  by  an  expo- 
sition of  the  mystic's  logic.88  I  have  already  said  that  the  mystics 
are,  historically,  keen  logicians  and  dialecticians ;  even  dropping 
for  the  moment  the  question  as  to  the  right  of  mysticism  as  such 
to  be  called  cognition,  one  cannot  deny  that  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  logical  path  does  often  lead  to  it.  This  path  we  wish  to  examine. 
Starting  with  the  subject-object  relation  the  mystic  would  say, 
surely  the  obvious  meaning  of  that  relationship  is  the  search  for 
reality.  Reality  is  the  goal  of  all  thinking  and  knowing,  of  every 
conscious  process.  This  is  hardly  an  assumption ;  it  would  seem  to 
be  as  well  grounded  empirically  and  rationally  as  any  fact  could 
well  be.  Whatever  definition  men  may  have  for  reality,  it  is 
surely  something  they  are  endeavoring  all  the  time  to  know,  to 
attain,  to  conform  their  lives  to.  The  whole  point  of  the  age- 
long struggle  for  scientific  knowledge,  for  metaphysical  certainty, 
for  practical  adaptation  of  means  to  end,  is  lost,  if  one  conceives 
of  men  in  some  mad  way  as  desiring  what  we  call  unreality,  of 
struggling  to  build  up  a  dream-world  of  falsehoods  and  incon- 
sistencies.  We  cannot  quarrel  with  the  first  step  in  the  mystic's 
imagined  argument — that  reality,  whatever  else  it  is,  is  at  least 
what  men  want,  what  they  are  struggling  to  reach  in  thinking  and 
in  every  activity.  But,  continues  the  mystic,  if  reality  is  the  satis- 
faction, the  goal,  of  the  knowing  process,  it  itself  must  be 
unknowable — and  that  for  the  simple  reason  that  everything 
known  or  knowable  is  just  therein  not  satisfaction,  but  further 
provocation.  The  known  is  always  and  only  finite,  a  source  of 
further  questions  and  perplexities.  And  if  some  one  should  say: 
"But  we  might  some  day  find  an  object  perfectly  satisfactory,  an 


MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM.  25 

object  which  would  explain  everything  else,"  the  mystic  would 
show  his  deeper  reason  for  denying  that  knowledge  can  reach  to 
reality.  For  thought  or  the  knowing  process  just  is  the  constant 
working  over  of  something  not  itself  into  terms  of  itself — into 
words  and  ideas.  You  cannot  think  without  thinking  of  some- 
thing— the  very  life  of  thought  thus  depends  upon  its  other.  To 
say  "the  known,  or  knowable,  is  reality,"  would  imply  to  the 
mystic  something  else  beyond  reality  which  would  negate  the  ulti- 
mate character  of  the  first  reality.  For  reality,  to  the  mystic, 
must  be  what  is — must  be  perfectly  immediate. 

What  I  am  trying  to  say  is,  that  it  seems  to  be  the  very  nature 
of  knowledge  to  be  dualistic,  to  be  mediate,  to  strive  forever  to 
bring  into  harmony  the  knower  and  the  known.  But  to  mysti- 
cism, such  a  mediation,  resting,  as  it  does,  on  a  fundamental 
distinction  between  the  knower  and  the  known,  never  can  be  I, 
ultimate,  never  can  reach  reality.  The  process  of  ideation  builds 
up  a  screen  of  unreality,  between  the  knower  and  the  known ;  the  \ 
only  perfect  satisfaction  is  to  be  found  in  the  perfectly  immediate, 
the  absolutely  individual,  the  pure  "this"  felt  and  not  translated 
by  ideas  into  something  other  than  itself.  But  this  purely  imme- 
diate cannot  be  found  in  any  sensuous  experience — the  sense 
experience,  just  as  the  thought  experience,  is  always  pointing 
beyond  itself,  tending  to  get  translated  into  words  and  ideas,  to 
raise  questions.  The  real,  the  satisfaction  of  knowing,  can  only 
be  the  quenching  of  knowing,  and  that  not  from  any  hopelessness 
of  our  finite  mode  of  knowing,  but  logically,  from  the  very  nature 
of  knowledge  itself.  Not  because  "reality  is  independent  of 
thinking,"  not  because  reality  is  something  "out  there"  of  which 
I  only  become  aware  through  sense-data,  which  never  are  nor 
would  be  things  in  themselves,  no  matter  how  much  the  senses 
might  be  sharpened  and  increased,  is  reality  to  the  mystic  unknow- 
able. In  Royce's  words,  "Although  all  known  and  knowable 
objects  should  be  present  to  us  in  a  transparency  of  light,  they 
could  not  be  reality — there  must  be  at  the  heart  of  them  an 
impenetrable  mystery — the  source  of  the  distinction  upon  which 
the  world  of  objects  rests.  Not  omniscience  itself  could  fathom 
this  mystery — because  it  is  logically  unfathomable."  Then,  one 
might  say,  there  is  no  use  talking  about  reality — neither  you  nor 
I  nor  any  man  will  ever  be  able  to  lay  hold  on  it.  The  answer 
is  the  sudden  characteristic  turn  that  mysticism  takes :  "Ah,"  it 


26  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

says,  "but  I  have  laid  hold  on  reality.  How  or  why  I  do  not 
have  to  tell  you,  because  here  at  last  is  a  Real  Fact — a  fact 
untranslatable  into  other  terms."  This,  in  general  terms,  is  the 
preliminary  position  the  mystic  takes — always  he  insists  on  the 
logical  unknowability  of  reality  in  idea,  just  on  account  of 
the  inner  nature  of  the  ideational  process — always  he  insists  on 
its  experienceability  and  the  absolute  certainty  of  that  experience. 

This  profound  dialectical  process,  whatever  its  inconsistencies 
and  unsatisfactoriness,  has  at  least  analyzed  keenly  the  knowing 
process  and  has  found  as  a  result  that  reason,  just  because  it  is 
what  it  is,  is  unfitted  to  reach  the  ultimately  real,  the  most  con- 
crete individual — yet  it  finds  as  just  the  implication  of  this  rela- 
tion that  reality  does  somehow  exist  for  us. 

In  making  the  claim  that  he  has  found  the  utmost  reality 
immediately,  the  mystic  sets  a  tremendous  problem.  He  repudi- 
ates thereby  ideational  knowledge  with  irresistible  logic.  Ade- 
quate, his  theory  certainly  is  not.  Now,  although  one  can  throw 
away  the  mystic's  solution  of  his  paradox,  although  one  may  cast 
all  manner  of  psychological  doubts  on  the  extra-subjective  char- 
acter of  his  experience,  one  cannot  throw  away  his  point  of  view. 
He  has  cast  a  doubt  on  the  fundamental  assumption  of  philoso- 
phy— that  thought  and  life  are  somehow  commensurate — and  this 
doubt  must  stand  unassailed  so  long  as  mystical  insight  and  medi- 
ated knowledge  are  kept  separated.  For  even  though  one  should 
assail  this  doubt  with  all  the  tools  of  logic,  one  cannot  by  "logic" 
in  the  usual  sense,  prove  that  logic  transcends  logic. 

There  is,  then,  at  least  this  negative  truth  in  mysticism,  that 
idea  cannot  of  itself  make  sure  its  own  position  of  reaching  to 
reality.  So  long  as  ideation  is  conceived  of  as  a  distinction,  a 
separation,  a  pointing  beyond  itself,  there  is  truth  in  the  mystic's 
claim  that  not  thus  does  one  lay  hold  on  reality.  But  the  mystic 
goes,  of  course,  much  further  in  his  own  positive  estimation  of 
the  truth  of  mysticism — and  I  think  that  either  he  is  right  in 
his  estimation  of  its  truth,  and  all  knowledge  in  idea  is  vain  and 
impossible,  or  the  truth  of  mysticism  is  deeper  and  more  universal 
than  the  mystic  knows,  and  reality  is  more  concretely  and  tri- 
umphantly knowable  than  he  guesses.  The  mystic's  point  of  view 
can  only  be  transcended  by  being  first  accepted.  Let  us,  then, 
grant  his  position  for  a  time — that  only  he  can  and  does  reach 
reality — and  ask  how  he  actually  reaches  his  results,  ask  if  this 


MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM.  27 

process  is  so  sui  generis,  so  dangerously  subjective,  so  without 
a  criterion  of  objective  truth-value,  as  it  seems  to  be. 

The  aim  of  the  remainder  of  this  paper  shall  be  to  examine 
this  question  in  a  two-fold  way;  (i)  by  inquiring  into  what  the 
real  nature  of  the  mystical  knowledge  is,  what  the  actual  cog- 
nitive experience  behind  the  mystic's  vague  and  speculative,  or 
passionate  and  metaphorical,  words,  may  have  been;  and  (2) 
by  seeking  for  the  relation  of  this  experience  to  the  ordinary  cog- 
nitive experience  which  seems  so  plain  and  clear  in  contrast  to  the 
mystic's  way,  but  which  yet  shows  itself,  as  we  shall  see,  even 
as  logically  self-contradictory  as  the  mystic  has  found  it  to 
be,  when  considered  merely  as  an  ideational,  representative  pro- 
cess. For  the  thesis  of  this  paper  is  that,  while  mysticism  can- 
not  be  understood  except  as  a  cognitive  achievement,  in  relation 
to  the  general  problems  of  truth-value  and  validity,  no  cogni- 
tive process,  no  thinking,  can  be  understood  except  as,  in  some 
profound  and  organic  way,  a  part  of  the  mystical  achievement; 
further,  that  without  a  certain  grasp  of  the  meaning  of  mysti- 
cism as  a  type  of  cognition  it  is  impossible  to  make  an  analysis  of 
thinking  as  a  living  process.  To  make  possible  to  some  slight 
degree  this  illumination  of  the  nature  of  thought  by  an  exami- 
nation of  the  mystical  insight  and  its  function  in  thinking  is  the 
purpose  of  this  paper ;  to  effect  that  purpose,  we  shall  turn  first 
to  a  somewhat  detailed  analysis  of  instances  of  mystical  illumi- 
nation, seeking  to  find  what  its  fundamental  nature  is,  and  reserv- 
ing to  a  later  portion  of  the  paper  the  question  of  the  relation  of 
this  insight  to  the  usual  cognitive  process. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  EPISTEMOLOGICAL  PROBLEM  IN  MEISTER 
ECKHART. 

One  must  then,  attempt  an  analysis  and  interpretation  of  the 
cognitive  experience  of  mysticism — not,  indeed,  of  the  mystic's 
theory  of  knowledge,  for  it  is  due  to  a  great  extent  to  the  inad- 
equacy of  the  mystic's  theory  that  we  have  a  problem  in  mysti- 
cism,— but  rather,  of  his  knowing  experience  itself.  One  must 
try  to  find  behind  the  mystic's  words  what  was  happening  to 
him — how,  in  the  last  analysis  he  has  reached  the  ontological 
certainties  he  asserts,  and  what  meaning,  positive  or  negative, 
valuable  or  unvaluable,  these  assertions  and  the  mystical  way 
of  reaching  them  may  have  for  an  understanding  of  human 
truth-getting. 

I  have  chosen  to  try  to  get  behind  the  mystic's  words,  at  his 
experience,  primarily  through  the  medium  of  the  mystic  Meister 
Eckhart  (A.  D.  1260-1327)  for  the  following  reasons:  (i)  In 
Meister  Eckhart,  mysticism  is,  as  it  were,  in  solution.  We  find 
him  a  scholar  and  university  leader,  educated  in  all  the  traditions 
of  scholasticism  and  the  church,  and  remaining  firmly  fixed  in 
them,  a  brilliant  dialectician  and  logician,  often  a  worse  juggler 
with  abstract  concepts  than  the  most  hair-splitting  of  his  contem- 
porary scholastics — we  find  him  appealing  frequently  and  dog- 
matically to  the  accepted  authorities,  and  writing  abstract  treatises 
in  Latin  as  well  as  popular  ones  in  German.  Yet  we  find  him,  too, 
one  of  the  most  extreme  and  powerful  of  the  mystics  both  in  his 
teaching  and  in  his  influence.  Even  Denifle,  to  whom  Meister 
Eckhart  was  primarily  a  scholastic  and  an  inferior  one,  says,  "Yet 
he  was  also  a  mystic"89 — and  that  without  allowing  him  a  single 
unique  idea, — while  his  accepted  place  in  the  history  of  thought  is 
that  of  the  father  of  German  mysticism.90  Viewing  these  two 
aspects  of  him,  the  question  justifiably  arises,  "Was  Meister  Eck- 
hart only  a  scholastic  of  exceptional  religious  zeal  and  emotional 
fervor,  who  translated  scholasticism  into  the  paradoxical  concepts 
of  the  people,  or  is  there  something  uniquely  mystical  in  him?" 
It  is  in  the  possibility  of  such  a  question  that  the  chief  value  of 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  29 

Meister  Eckhart  for  a  study  of  this  kind  lies,  for  in  seeking  the 
characteristics  which  make  Meister  Eckhart  just  not  one  of  the 
scholastics  of  his  time,  one  finds  a  single  unique  mystical  ele- 
ment, which  is  at  the  same  time  the  essential  element  in  mysticism, 
and  which,  because  it  is  so  sharply  outlined  by  contrast  to 
the  other  elements  in  Meister  Eckhart's  thought  and  teaching, 
though  somehow  permeating,  and  sometimes  transmuting  them, 
occurs  in  an  exceptionally  clear  form  for  a  study  of  its  nature 
and  working  force.  My  first  reason,  then,  for  choosing  Meister 
Eckhart  is  that  I  have  found  the  experiential  cognitive  element 
of  mysticism  in  him  very  sharply  expressed. 

My  second  reason  for  choosing  Meister  Eckhart  is  that  he, 
while  presenting  this  element  as  a  fact,  does  not  bury  it  under 
his  own  interpretation  and  analysis  of  it,  as  does  St.  Theresa,  for 
instance.  Valuable  as  the  introspection  of  the  mystics  may  be 
for  psychology,  for  epistemology  one  may  judge  better  of  the 
knowing  process  through  seeing  it  actually  at  work,  through  see- 
ing the  actual  results  it  brings  out  than  through  hearing  about 
its  thousand  concomitants.  Meister  Eckhart  tells  us  what  he 
knows,  and  lets  us  see  how  he  knows  it,  with  the  freedom  of 
a  total  disregard  for  his  own  theory. 

It  is  true  that  Eckhart's  ideas  are  very  largely  scholastic ;  his 
Latin  treatises  are  taken  up  with  the  discussion  of  such  questions 
as  the  nature  of  God  as  actus  purus;91  the  distinction  between 
the  Attributes,  the  Relations,  and  the  Essence,  of  God,92  between 
God  and  Godhead,93  and  his  German  sermons  and  tracts  are  full 
of  discussions  as  to  the  definitions  of  the  trinity,  concerning  the 
priority  of  God's  essence  over  his  fatherhood,94  etc.,  where  every 
step  is  supported  by  abstract,  scholastic,  traditional  and  often  triv- 
ial, reasons.  Yet  one  continually  finds  strange  flashes  of  inner 
certainty  expressed, — certainty  independent,  or  even  subversive, 
of  logic.  In  the  midst  of  closely  argued  passages  come  often 
sentences  or  paragraphs  founded  on  no  reasons  beyond  them- 
selves, sometimes  even  contradicting  the  closely-wrought  argu- 
ment, yet  advanced  as  absolutely  certain  truth.95  An  example  of 
this  kind  of  change  in  thought  and  method  in  Eckhart  will  make 
this  point  clearer.  Eckhart  has  been  developing  the  idea  of  God 
as  "actus  purus/'  as  incapable  of  definition  and  distinction,  and 
has  proved  (in  scholastic  fashion),  that  since  this  is  the  nature 
or  being  of  God,  and  since  being  is  the  same  everywhere,  it  is  also 


30  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

the  true  nature  of  the  soul,  in  so  far  as  it  really  is,  to  be  undiffer- 
entiated,  free  from  all  particularity.96  Then,  he  says  with  swift 
change,  the  soul  cries  out,  "Nothing  which  is  expressible  is  God 
for  me!  And  so  I  flee  before  God,  for  God's  sake.  Alas,  then, 
where  is  the  soul's  abiding  place?  On  the  wings  of  the  wind!"90 
And  Eckhart  goes  on  in  explanation,  not  by  giving  further  scho- 
lastic reasons,  but  by  expanding  these  words  in  a  sort  of  ecstatic 
fervor  of  certainty.  "Under  the  wings  of  the  wind  are  to  be 
understood,"  he  says,  "the  choir  of  Seraphim,  as  they  float  in 
purest  knowledge  of  God.  Above  them  all  flies  the  soul!  But 
this  cannot  be  granted  to  her  until  she  has  left  everything  that 
has  form  and  likeness,  so  that  she  neither  finds  any  such  thing 
in  her,  nor  seeks  rest  in  it.  ...  She  must  be  bare  of  all  that 
is  created,  and  sink  into  pure  nothing.  .  .  .  The  seraph  with 
all  his  knowledge  is  not  able  to  attain  to  this  pure  nothingness; 
in  it  the  soul  dwells,  above  all  Seraphim,  above  all  knowledge."97 
A  little  further  on,  we  find  Eckhart  again  proving  and  explain- 
ing, saying  that  God  as  the  highest  good  is  being,  that  only  for 
the  understanding  of  the  "creatures"  is  he  nothingness.  "The 
divine  being,"  he  says  here,  "is  reason."98  Or  he  calls  out  in 
another  passage  of  unmediated  certainty,  "For  this  is  an  unthought 
truth,  that  comes  straight  out  of  the  heart  of  God,  unmediated  !"99 
And  again,  "Had  no  one  been  here,  I  would  have  had  to  preach 
this  sermon  to  this  stick  of  wood."100  Or  finally,  after  another 
dialectic  passage,  "And  now  I  pray  you!  Grasp  this  by  the 
eternal  and  ever-firm  truth,  and  by  my  own  soul — again  I  will 
say  the  never-said.  God  and  the  Godhead  are  as  different  as 
heaven  and  earth."101  "Be  certain  of  this,  for  it  is  true,  and 
truth  itself  says  it."102  To  find  the  grounds  of  this  certainty 
would  be  to  find  a  very  ultimate  sort  of  test  for  this  type  of 
knowledge  and  is  an  essential  part  of  the  problem. 

A  second  characteristic  of  these  same  passages  of  ecstatic  cer- 
tainty, or  better,  a  second  aspect  of  this  same  characteristic,  is 
the  expression  in  the  passages  of  a  certain  impatience  with  dis- 
cursive reason,  with  knowledge  which  can  explain,  define,  predi- 
cate. Meister  Eckhart  says,  "So  long  as  the  soul  has  a  God, 
knows  God,  has  knowledge  (ideas)  about  God,  so  long  is  she 
separated  from  God.  .  .  .  The  soul  feels  within  itself,  that 
neither  this  likeness  nor  that  essence  is  what  she  seeks;  she 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  3! 

knows  herself  in  them  to  be  still  imprisoned  in  difference  and 
manifoldness."103  "To  know  God,  you  must  know  him  as  some- 
thing unknown."104  "So  long  as  you  do  not  drown  yourself  in 
the  bottomless  sea  of  the  Godhead,  so  long  you  cannot  learn  to 
know  him."105  One  must  try  to  understand,  not  only  the  abso- 
lute certainty  of  these  passages,  but  the  unmediated  way  of  know- 
ing which  they  seek  to  express.  Eckhart  tries  to  dismiss  any  ideas 
which  stand  between  him,  and  his  supreme  object  of  knowledge; 
his  message  is  that  he  has  known  in  experience  what  would 
seem  to  be  known,  and  that  imperfectly,  only  in  idea — and  because 
of  his  attempt  to  express  his  experience,  he  repudiates  as  of  little 
worth,  all  knowing  in  idea.  This  phase  presents  an  important 
aspect  of  the  epistemological'  problem  in  Meister  Eckhart — is  it  a 
sort  of  reversion  to  the  whole  of  reality  which  is  necessary  to 
analytic  knowledge,  or  is  it  merely  the  ecstatic  apotheosis  of 
discontent  with  limitation? 

Before  we  can  come  to  a  closer  examination  of  the  problem, 
one  more  aspect  of  these  distinctly  mystical  passages  in  the  midst 
of  Meister  Eckhart's  scholasticism  needs  to  be  examined.  It 
is,  that  they  assert  continually  the  finding  of  a  public  object.  In 
spite  of  the  non-symbolic  character  of  Meister  Eckhart's  knowl- 
edge, the  object  of  it  is  far  from  a  private,  subjective  experience, 
in  Meister  Eckhart's  estimation.  Something  has  been  found 
which  is  the  surest  thing,  and  the  most  universal  thing,  in 
the  world.  Meister  Eckhart  says,  "The  people  often  say  to 
me,  'Pray  God  for  us !'  Then  I  think  to  myself,  'Why  do 
you  not  go  into  yourselves?  Why  do  you  not  abide  in  your- 
selves and  lay  hold  on  your  own  treasure?  For  indeed  you 
bear  the  essence  of  all  reality  in  yourselves/  That  we  may 
so  remain  in  ourselves,  and  that  we  may  so  possess  all  reality 
without  mediation  and  without  difference,  in  true  blessedness, 
God  help  us  to  that  !"106  Or  again,  "Truly !  In  every  one  who 
is  faithful,  God  feels  so  inexpressibly  great  joy,  that  if  he  should 
be  robbed  of  it,  he  would  be  robbed  of  his  life,  his  existence,  his 
Godhead  itself!  .  .  .  Fear  not!  For  this  joy  is  near  to  you, 
and  is  in  you.  There  is  no  one  of  you  so  unready,  so  unpracticed, 
so  weak  in  knowledge,  or  so  far  from  God  as  not  to  be  able  to 
find  this  joy  in  himself,  as  full  reality  and  as  rapture  and  as 
knowledge,  before  he  leaves  the  church — yes,  while  I  still  preach ; 


32  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

he  can  really  find  it  in  himself  and  experience  and  possess  it,  as 
sure  as  God  is  God  and  I  am  a  man."107  What  right  had  Meister 
Eckhart  to  interpret  his  experience  as  one  possible  for  all  ?  Does 
something  in  the  psychological  character  of  his  experience 
account  for  his  so  doing,  or  are  we  to  find  something  universal, 
valid,  true  for  all  experience,  in  Meister  Eckhart's  experience? 
Again  one  must  defer  the  problem  for  a  little. 

It  is  back  of  such  passages  as  I  have  indicated — passages 
expressing  absolute  certainty,  unfounded  on  logic,  passages 
expressing  a  direct  winning  to  the  heart  of  things,  an  "immediate 
conscious  relation  to  the  most  real,"  and  finally  passages  claim- 
ing for  this  certain,  non-symbolic  way  of  knowing,  truth-value, 
universal  validity,  that  one  must  seek  for  Meister  Eckhart's 
experience.  Only  by  an  analysis  and  interpretation  of  such  pas- 
sages, can  one  find  the  cognitive  experience  of  Meister  Eckhart's 
which  gave  rise  to  such  tremendous  claims,  can  one  hope  to  test 
and  evaluate  it,  to  meet  the  epistemological  problems  which  such 
passages  suggest:  What  are  the  grounds  of  certainty  in  Meister 
Eckhart?  (2)  Is  the  relation  of  mystical  knowledge  to  analytic, 
discursive  reason  wholly  a  negative  one — one  of  denial?  (3)  In 
what  sense — if  any — can  the  mystical  object,  the  mystical  motive, 
be  a  universal  one? 

I  turn  to  a  presentation  and  analysis  of  this  material  gath- 
ered from  Meister  Eckhart.  In  order  to  make  this  presentation 
in  clear  form,  I  shall  give  in  Eckhart's  own  words,  a  sort  of 
connected  story  of  his  cognitive  life,  bringing  out  (i)  What  he 
desired  as  object  of  knowledge,  (2)  how  he  attained  this  object, 
the  actual  knowing  process,  and  (3)  what  the  result,  as  com- 
pleted knowledge  (in  his  estimation)  and  also  as  perfected  know- 
ing-process, was.  Eckhart's  own  diction  it  is  necessary  to  use, 
at  least  to  some  degree,  at  least  sufficiently  to  make  an  adequate 
interpretation  of  it ;  for  while  it  is  a  strange  speech  that  he  uses, 
a  diction  at  once  of  passionate  intimacy  and  mysterious  abstract- 
ness,  a  speech  shot  through  and  through  with  the  vivid  religious 
ideas  and  phraseology  of  Eckhart's  time,  the  very  alienness  of 
the  speech  indicates  and  sometimes  reveals  the  alien  character  of 
the  thought  that  lies  behind  it.  It  is  no  accident,  that  Meister  Eck- 
hart's speech  is  full  of  metaphor  and  symbol,  often  unclear, 
laboring — it  is  rather  organically  expressive  of  the  very  heart  of 
his  thought  that  it  should  be  so,  and  not  until  we  see  the  inner 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  33 

necessity  for  the  strangeness  of  Meister  Eckhart's  speech,  have 
we  a  knowledge  which  can  be  sure  of  itself,  of  Meister  Eckhart's 
cognitive  experience. 

The  various  phases  of  Meister  Eckhart's  cognitive  life  which 
I  have  mentioned — namely,  its  conscious  goal  and  incentive,  its 
continuance  toward  that  goal,  and  its  culmination  in  complete 
knowledge  satisfaction,  can  all  be  clearly  distinguished  in  Meister 
Eckhart's  German  tracts  and  sermons,  and  are  all  expressive  of 
distinct  phases  in  his  experience.  By  presenting  them  continu- 
ously, in  a  rough  sort  of  time-sequence,  which  does  not,  of  course, 
pretend  to  be  historical,  I  can  bring  out  the  main  elements  of 
the  noetic  experience  of  Meister  Eckhart,  with  the  least  possi- 
ble repetition.  Since  I  shall  give  this  account  at  first  chiefly  in 
Meister  Eckhart's  own  words,  taken  for  the  most  part  from  his 
sermons,  it  may  seem  rather  like  an  exhortation  than  like  an 
account  of  experience,  but  that  is,  of  course,  a  merely  formal 
aspect. 

To  begin  with  the  cognitive  desire  of  Meister  Eckhart:  "If 
I  were  a  king,"108  he  says,  "and  did  not  know  it  myself,  I  would 
not  be  a  king.  But  if  I  had  the  firm  conviction  that  I  were  a 
king,  and  if  all  men  had  this  opinion,  and  I  knew  certainly  that 
they  held  this  belief,  then  I  would  be  king  and  all  the  king's  treas- 
ures would  be  mine.  .  .  .  Just  so  our  blessedness  is  dependent 
upon  this,  that  we  know  and  are  acquainted  with  (wissen  und  ken- 
nen)  the  highest  good,  God  himself.  I  have  a  power  in  my  soul, 
that  is  through  and  through  receptive  of  God.  I  am  as  certain 
as  I  live,  that  nothing  is  so  near  to  me  as  God;  he  is  nearer  to 
me  than  I  am  to  myself.  My  existence  depends  upon  this,  that 
God  is  near  and  present  to  me.  But  he  is  also  near  to  a  stone, 
or  to  a  stick  of  wood;  (the  difference  is)  that  they  do  not  know 
it.  If  the  stick  of  wood  knew  about  God,  and  became  conscious 
of  how  near  God  is  to  it,  as  the  highest  archangel  is  conscious 
of  God,  the  wood  would  possess  the  same  blessedness  as  the 
mighty  angel.  For  this  reason  is  man  holier  than  the  piece  of 
wood — because  he  is  acquainted  with  God,  and  knows  how  near 
God  is  to  him.  He  enjoys  just  so  much  the  more  blessedness  the 
more  conscious  he  is  of  God's  presence,  and  just  so  much  less, 
the  less  he  knows  him.  He  is  not  blessed  for  this  reason,  that 
God  is  in  him,  and  is  near  to  him  and  that  he  has  God,  but  only 
for  this,  that  he  knows  God ;  that  he  knows  how  near  God  is  to 


34  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

him,  and  that  he  is  near  and  present  to  him."  Now  what  does 
Meister  Eckhart  mean  by  this  passage  and  others  like  it?109  He 
is  plainly  expressing  in  it  the  desire,  the  drive,  toward  mystical 
contemplation  and  attainment  which  he  experienced;  and  one 
only  falsifies  this  passage  if  one  looks  upon  it  merely  as 
the  expression  of  the  universal  religious  need.  Perhaps  it  is 
an  aspect  of  that  need;  but  it  is  an  aspect  with  so  specific  a 
character  of  its  own,  that  to  class  it  forthwith  as  a  "religious" 
craving,  is  to  neglect  relevant  details,  to  misdescribe  the  object. 
For  God  was  to  Meister  Eckhart  primarily,  not  goodness,  nor 
justice,  nor  loving  kindness,  but  truth-value,  reality.  Eckhart 
specifically  denies  that  the  first  named  attributes  can  be  assigned 
to  God  at  all,110  in  the  strictest  sense,  and  that  just  for  the  reason 
that  God  is  the  ultimate,  the  final  reality,  the  subject  of  all  pred- 
ication, the  basis  of  all  judgment.  "Thou  shalt  worship  God  as 
he  is,"  Eckhart  says,  "as  a  non-God,  a  non-spirit,  a  non-person, 
a  nothing  formed,"111 — and  again  the  meaning  of  that,  and  of 
his  tremendous  cognitive  desire,  is,  that  Meister  Eckhart  wanted 
to  know  the  very  subject-nature  of  reality,112  and  that  not  by 
guess-work,  by  inference  from  other  less  ultimate  objects  of 
knowledge,  but  in  a  flash,  directly,  as,  after  much  piling-up  of 
attributes  in  the  beginning  of  acquaintanceship  with  a  person, — 
which  piling-up,  however,  never  does  go  beyond  the  barest 
acquaintance, — the  flash  of  knowledge  of  the  real  character  of  the 
person  comes,  and  unshakable  knowledge  of  him  is  had.  So  Eck- 
hart wanted  to  know  his  world — wanted  to  find  the  supreme  truth- 
value  which  embraced  all  lesser  truths — and  he  felt  that,  just  on 
account  of  its  supreme  and  ultimate  nature,  such  knowledge  was 
not  to  be  sought  in  any  outer  things,  in  any  avenues  of  sense — it 
must  be  back  of  them  all,  unlike  them  all,  itself  alone,  and  so 
never  to  be  known  in  idea,  symbol,  but  only  in  experience.  But 
if  not  in  things,  where  was  the  final  reality,  which  nothing  could 
invalidate  or  deny,  to  be  found?  The  fact  that  Meister  Eckhart 
did  not  despair  of  the  finding,  that,  to  use  Prof.  Hocking's  phrase, 
his  "bold  intention  was  to  win  to  some  direct  conscious  relation 
to  the  Most  Real,"  his  "bold  claim  was  to  have  done  so,"  is  what 
makes  him  a  mystic.  For  he  knew,  however  dimly,  that  because 
he  sought,  the  most  real  was  already  found;  and  found  not  in 
outward  things,  but  in  some  flash  of  insight,  of  direct  acquaint- 
ance. For  this  reason  was  "God,"  as  Meister  Eckhart  perforce 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  35 

named  the  supreme  object  of  his  search,  "nothingness"  to  him, — 
because  it  was  the  very  core  of  reality  itself,  which  could  not  be 
named  except  in  symbol  without  the  attempt  to  exhaust  it  in  some 
attribute — an  attempt  which  would  deny  it. 

Of  how  he  attained  to  this  knowledge,  Meister  Eckhart  shows, 
by  implying  behind  his  direct  expression,  (i)  that  some  sort  of 
initial  partial  illuminative  experience  took  place  which  set  him 
on  the  quest113 — that  it  is  in  giving  up  implicitly  to  this  initial,  r 
fleeting,  half-understood  intuition  of  the  inner  life  that  the  first  I 
step  -toward  mystical  knowledge  lies.  He  says,  "When  one  feels 
himself  driven  to  true  inwardness,  let  him  boldly  let  fall  every- 
thing outward,  even  if  it  be  holy  practices  to  which  he  has  bound 
himself  by  vows  from  which  neither  pope  nor  bishop  could  free 
him!  If  a  man  is  bound  never  so  strongly  to  all  sorts  of  out- 
ward things  and  there  comes  to  him  that  impulse  to  inward  expe- 
rience, so  let  him  be  free  of  them  all !  So  long  as  the  inner 
experience  lasts,  whether  a  week  or  a  month,  or  a  year,  so  long 
must  God,  by  whom  one  is  imprisoned,  take  his  place  for  him."114 
Or  "When  it  happens  that  one  becomes  aware  of  a  better,  (than 
he  has  ever  known  before)  of  which  he  really  knows  and  feels 
that  it  is  the  best,  so  are  all  the  earlier  goods  for  him  finished  and 
fulfilled."115  Or  finally,  "How  do  you  know  this?  (someone  may 
ask.)  See!  Your  heart  feels  itself  often  strangely  moved  and 
turned  from  the  world,  how  could  this  take  place,  save  by  a 
streaming  in  of  the  (divine)  light?"116 

One  can  only  perform  the  supreme  act  of  concentration 
(according  to  Meister  Eckhart)  which  is  demanded  as  obedience 
to  the  sudden  first  partial  illumination,  to  the  awakening  of  desire 
for  the  way  of  knowledge,  by  a  withdrawal  of  attention  from  all 
other  objects  of  interest — hence  the  central  position  of  "Abge- 
schiedenheit,"  and  of  the  "triple  death  of  the  soul,"  in  Meister 
Eckhart's  teaching.  Eckhart  says  on  this  point:  "The  best  and  '• 
highest  virtue  is  no  other  than  a  pure,  absolutely  freed  from  /If 
everything  created,  detachment.  This  detachment  stands  so 
near  to  pure  nothingness,  that  there  is  nothing  which  would  be 
fine  enough  to  find  room  in  it  except  God, — he  is  so  simple  and 
so  fine  that  he  easily  finds  room  in  a  detached  heart."117  "Perfect 
detachment  knows  no  desire  for  the  creatures,  no  humiliation  and 
no  vainglory ;  she  will  be  neither  above  nor  below,  but  will  only 
rest  upon  herself,  hating  no  one  and  loving  no  one.  She  does 


36  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

not  desire  to  be  this  or  that,  for  whoever  wants  that,  wants 
something — detachment  wants  only  to  be  nothing."118  "Detach- 
ment .  .  .  cannot  pray  at  all;  for  whoever  prays  desires  some- 
thing of  God,  .  .  .  but  the  detached  heart  neither  desires  any- 
thing of  God,  nor  has  anything  of  which  it  were  gladly 
I  free.119  .  .  .  The  soul  must  give  up  everything,  God  alike  and 
•  the  creatures.  That  sounds  strangely,  that  the  soul  must  give  up 
I  God!  I  affirm,  it  is  to  the  soul,  in  order  to  become  perfect, 
in  some  sense  more  important  to  lose  God  than  to  lose  the  crea- 
tures. The  soul  must  go  out  of  the  picture  of  God  .  .  .  through 
a  divine  death/*120  Or  for  a  final  example,  "Oh,  how  holily  must 
the  man  live,  who  will  come  (to  this  knowledge  of  God).  He 
must  indeed  be  dead  to  all  diversity  of  activity  before  this  hap- 
pens to  him."121  "St.  John  said  with  right,  'Blessed  are  the  dead 
who  die  in  the  Lord !'  For  so  must  you,  oh  man,  be  free  of  all 
attention  to  and  striving  toward  this  and  that — yes,  you  must 
even  be  free  of  all  sensibility,  even  as  God  is,  if  you  wish  to  under- 
stand the  mystery  of  the  divine  secret/'122 

The  positive  side  of  this  detachment,  as  seen — and  experi- 
enced— by  Meister  Eckhart,  is  a  sort  of  living  in  the  stillness  of 
an  extreme  and  ecstatic  concentration.    He  says:    "Let  the  eter- 
nal voice  cry  in  you,  and  be  to  yourself  and  to  all  things  a  wil- 
•   derness  !123    A  triumphant  spirit  must  you  have,  not  a  downcast 
i    one — a  burning  spirit,  in  which  always  an  untroubled  silent  still- 
/    ness  rules.     .  .  .     That  we  may  win  to  this  rest,  to  this  inner  still- 
ness, so  that  the  word  of  God  can  be  spoken  and  heard  in  us, 
may    the    Father,    the    Word,    and    the    Holy    Ghost    help    us 
thereto!"124 

These  elements  seem  to  have  been  continuously  present  to  Eck- 
hart's  consciousness  as  strain  and  attainment,  attainment  and 
strain.  In  nearly  every  sermon,  there  is  some  reference  to  a 
spontaneous  sort  of  partial  illumination,  to  the  need  of  inward 
freedom  from  outward  things,  to  the  need  of  concentration  upon 
unity. 

I  So  far  we  can  say  that  Meister  Eckhart's  experience  comprised 
I  an  intense  desire  for  a  sort  of  whole-knowledge ;  a  knowledge 
not  to  be  invalidated  by  any  other  subsequently  to  be  found 
items  of  knowledge — a  knowledge  sure  because  all-embracing, 
and  hence  necessarily  riot  a  knowledge  of  particulars,  which,  by 
its  very  partial  nature,  is  continually  to  be  invalidated.  This 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  37 

desire  found  expression  in  a  kind  of  cognitive  vision  of  the 
possibility  and  actuality  of  a  central  knowledge — a  sort  of  illumi- 
nated knowing  of  what  reality  must  be  like, — a  vision  which 
demanded  the  utmost  concentration  of  attention  upon  it.  It 
remains  to  examine  the  final  aspect  of  noetic  mystical  experience, 
that  of  full  attainment. 

What  does  Eckhart  report  that  he  knows  in  this  full  attain- 
ment, and  what  of  experience  can  we  see  behind  his  words? 
Eckhart  says  of  this:  "Here  (in  this  full  attainment)  is  God's 
ground  my  ground,  and  my  ground  God's  ground — here  I  live 
out  of  my  pwn  being  as  God  lives  out  of  his  own  being.  Who- 
ever has  for  only  an  instant  looked  into  this  ground,  to  him  are 
a  thousand  ducats  of  red  beaten  gold  as  one  false  dollar.  Per- 
haps you  have  seen  in  a  false  thought-picture  the  truth,  as  in  a 
mirror,  but  the  best  you  have  never  possessed"  (without  the 
mystical  achievement).125  (You  must)  "drown  yourself  in  the 
bottomless  sea  of  the  Godhead."126 

And  again:  "Yes,  the  soul  is  brought  so  closely  (in  this 
achievement)  into  the  body  of  God,  that  neither  all  the  angels 
nor  all  the  cherubim  and  seraphim  know  any  more  the  difference 
between  them,  nor  are  able  to  find  it.  For  where  they  touch 
God,  there  they  touch  the  soul — where  the  soul,  there  God."127 

"The  eternal  process  is  a  self -revealing  of  God,  in  pure  knowl- 
edge, where  the  knower  is  that  which  is  known,"128 

Or  finally:  "Without  cessation  God  bears  the  son  in  the 
soul.  .  .  .  Nay,  he  bears  me  as  his  son,  as  the  same  son.  Yes, 
he  bears  me  not  merely  as  his  son,  he  bears  me  as  himself,  and 
himself  as  me;  he  bears  me  as  his  own  essence,  as  his  own 
nature, — out  of  the  deepest  fountain  I  flow  forth  in  the  Holy 
Ghost, — there  is  only  one  Life,  one  Essence,  one  work."129 

These  passages,  so  deeply  metaphorical,  so  tensely  emotional, 
seem  at  first  sight  scarcely  to  express  a  cognitive  achievement. 
They  seem  rather,  one  would  say,  to  express  some  dimly 
understood  disorganizing  of  the  emotional  nature,  some  vague 
pantheistic  conclusion.  But  the  very  symbolism  of  the  lan- 
guage, the  very  vague  and  paradoxical  character  of  the  fig- 
ures, consciously  expresses  the  fact  that  the  knowledge  attained 
just  is  not  knowledge  in  idea,  is  not  translatable  into  other  terms, 
can  only  be  indicated,  pointed  out.  And  the  fact  that  this  achieve- 
ment is  the  assertion  of  unity  of  nature  between  the  knower  and 


38  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

the  supreme  object  of  his  search,  is  the  mystic's  declaration  that 
no  screen  of  idea  remains  between  him  and  the  ultimate  reality, 
that  reality  itself  is  found  in  the  present  moment  as  a  part,  and  the 
deepest  part,  of  experience  as  such,  just  as  sharp,  as  literal,  as  the 
present  moment. 

What  is  the  outcome  of  this  analysis  of  the  epistemological 
problem  in  Meister  Eckhart?  Perhaps  the  most  striking  result 
is  that  Meister  Eckhart,  in  spite  of  the  elaborate  preparation  for 
his  knowing,  in  spite  of  his  frequent  and  long  descriptions  of  it, 
can  scarcely  be  said  to  be  an  original  thinker  in  the  formation 
of  concepts.  By  winning  to  the  heart  of  reality,  he  did  not 
acquire  any  novel  particular  insights,  any  new  assurances  of  par- 
ticular truths.  Much  that  seems  new  and  anarchical  in  him,  is 
but  the  struggling  of  his  thought  to  express  itself,  to  form  for 
its  concepts,  already  possessed  of  a  thoroughly  established  Latin 
terminology,  a  suitable  German  terminology.131  Again  and  again, 
one  finds  a  concept  expressed  in  Meister  Eckhart's  strange  pas- 
sionate language,  which  seems  without  doubt  original — only  to 
find  it  even  more  definitely  and  consciously  expressed  in  the  Latin 
of  some  one  of  the  greater  scholastics,  usually  Thomas  or  Augus- 
tine, or  in  the  words  of  one  of  the  Greek  fathers,  or  even  of 
Averroes  or  Avicenna.  For  example,  such  a  seemingly  char- 
acteristic conception  as  "das  ewige  Nu,"  used  by  Eckhart  so 
frequently  and  forcibly,  corresponds  exactly  to  the  scholastic 
"mine  aeternitatis,"  "mine  indivisibile  in  aeternitate."182  Denifle 
has  traced  with  great  elaboration  Eckhart's  ideas,  and  has  shown 
how  thoroughly  scholastic  was  the  ground  in  which  they  grew,  as 
well  as  the  form  which  they  took  ;133  the  one  real  claim  which  Eck- 
hart has  to  originality  in  thinking,  as  far  as  thought  content  is  con- 
cerned, is  at  best  the  fact  that  he  found  a  new  axis  for  the 
scholastic  fashion  of  thought — the  axis,  that  is,  of  human  per- 
sonality.134 Eckhart's  asserted  mystical  insight  then,  did  not 
issue  in  any  particular  new  truths  won ;  he  did  not  throw  down 
his  conceptual  tools,  give  up  the  tasks  of  reason.  Of  what  then, 
are  these  periods  of  full  illumination  significant,  since  they  are 
not  producive  of  new  concepts?  In  the  first  place,  this  period 
of  illumination  is  felt  as  a  period  of  identification  of  the  self 
with  the  object.  That  is,  the  value  lies  not  so  much  in  what  is 
known  as  in  how  it  is  known, — the  final  goal  of  knowledge,  the 
penetration  of  the  object  by  the  subject  is  here  achieved.  And 


EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  39 

it  is  achieved  just  by  the  universal  character  of  the  knowledge 
attained — knowledge  not  translatable  into  particulars,  but  knowl- 
edge which  somehow  changes  all  knowledge  of  particulars.  For 
it  is  significant  here  that  these  experiences  of  full  illumination  are 
rhythmic :  Eckhart  says  on  this  point,  "But  since  the  seeing  and 
the  experiencing  of  God  are  not  bearable  for  a  long  time,  God 
withdraws  himself  from  the  spirit  from  time  to  time."135  That  is, 
Eckhart  returns  to  the  world  of  everyday  life  and  thinking,  and 
finds  it  somehow  a  different  world  from  the  one  he  had  left.136 
He  sees  it,  we  must  conclude,  in  a  sort  of  universal  light — as  a 
world  whose  character,  for  instance,  he  so  certainly  knows,  that 
he  can  predict  of  the  most  Real  in  it,  an  almost  logical  necessity. 
He  says  for  instance,  "When  the  soul  has  so  gone  out  after 
God,  and  freed  herself  from  everything,  how  could  God  get 
out  of  it?  He  must  needs  pour  himself  into  the  soul."137  .  .  . 
"God  must  become  active  and  pour  himself  into  the  soul."138 
Meister  Eckhart  finds  the  goal  which  is  to  him  the  final  goal  of 
knowledge — the  full  truth  which  has  somehow  been  there  all 
along,  which  he  has  somehow  known  all  along,  possessed  in  his 
own  being,  yet  but  now  fully  attained  to. 

This  section  has  been  mainly  one  of  questions.  We  have  seen 
indeed  that  the  cognitive  achievement  of  Meister  Eckhart  is  an 
experience  of  a  sort  of  knowing  which  is  absolutely  sure  of  itself, 
which  is  unmediated,  which  is  felt  to  be  of  universal  as  well  as 
of  supreme  value,  and  whose  final  result  is  the  assertion  of  a 
directly  known  substance — a  final  reality,  undefined,  inarticu- 
lated — yet — and  this  is  perhaps  the  most  significant  feature  of  the 
whole  analysis — abiding  in  Meister  Eckhart's  thought,  shattering 
and  changing  all  other  knowing,  all  other  values,  for  him.  We 
have  seen  this  indeed — and  the  question  only  comes  the  more  per- 
sistently to  the  fore:  "Is  there  any  discoverable  truth  in  mysti- 
cism ?  Has  Meister  Eckhart  described  any  activity  which  is  actu- 
ally a  part  of  the  knowing  process,  the  search  for  the  truth, 
or  has  any  analysis  of  his  results  merely  a  curious  and  biographi- 
cal value?"  This  general  question  includes  the  three  particular 
problems  which  came  to  the  front  as  three  separate  questions, 
corresponding  to  the  various  points  of  view  from  which  we 
looked  at  mystical  knowledge — the  questions,  namely,  "What 
are  the  grounds  of  certainty  in  Meister  Eckhart?  (2)  Is  the 
relation  of  this  so-called  knowledge  to  ideational  knowledge, 


40  MYSTICISM   AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

wholly  a  negative  one?  (3)  Has  this  knowledge  any  claim  to 
validity?"  These  questions  are  really  three  statements  of  the 
one  essential  problem — the  claim  of  the  mystic  knowledge  to 
validity,  objectivity.  For  only  if  we  find  Meister  Eckhart's  sub- 
jective grounds  of  certainty  to  be  at  the  same  time  objective 
grounds  of  validity,  can  we  seek  for  any  relation  between  this 
experience  and  knowledge  in  idea  which  shall  be,  in  the  last 
analysis,  an  other  than  negative  one,  an  organic  one; — for  the 
determining  feature  of  knowledge  in  idea  just  is  that  it  is,  how- 
ever inadequate  or  unclear  it  may  be,  always  something  universal, 
shareable  with  others,  either  valid  or  not  valid.  If  mystical 
insight  turns  out  to  have  no  principles  of  validity  within  it,  to 
be  something  sui  generis,  out  of  the  universe  of  logical  thinking, 
then  we  can  look  for  no  relation  other  than  a  negative  one  between 
it  and  ideational  knowledge — and  we  can  also  seek  for  no  light 
from  it  upon  the  problem  as  to  how  thinking  can  express  reality, 
as  to  how  the  paradox  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  reasoning 
process,  is  to  be  solved. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   GROUNDS   OF   CERTAINTY   IN    MEISTER 
ECKHART. 

What  we  have  in  all  this  mass  of  statement,  however,  in  its  con- 
tent, paradoxical,  or  tradition-obeying,  or  unreasonable,  or  meta- 
phorical and  unclear,  is,  at  the  very  least,  the  expression  of  some 
ultimate  sort  of  experience,  an  experience  which  has  touched 
rock-bottom,  arrived  at  its  goal,  is  infinitely  sure  of  itself.  Upon 
what  grounds  is  it  sure  of  itself  ?  What  are  these  ultimate  foun- 
dations upon  which  it  rests? 

One  does  not  ask  this  question  for  biographical  reasons;  one 
does  not  ask  for  an  analysis  of  the  private  psychological  feelings 
of  Meister  Eckhart,  of  what  the  grounds  in  his  personal  char- 
acter or  private  experience  were,  which  made  him  espouse  with 
such  enthusiasm  just  these  and  these  ideas,  seemingly  abstract, 
often  seemingly  trivial  and  timeworn.  Nor  is  it  because  of  the 
risk  that  one  runs  in  examining  as  knowledge-content  what  may 
turn  out  to  be  a  mere  morass  of  subjectivity  and  invalidity,  that 
this  question  comes  so  immediately  and  persistently  to  the  fore. 

It  is  rather  for  the  fundamental  reason  indicated  in  the  last 
chapter:  what  we  mean  by  "to  know"  is  primarily,  "to  be 
certain" — with  the  growth  of  self-consciousness  we  add  "in 
valid  and  verifiable  ways."  Not  only  the  worth  of  knowledge, 
but  the  degree  to  which  it  really  and  truly  is  knowledge,  depends 
upon  its  grounds  of  certainty.  So  if  we  examined  Meister  Eck- 
hart's  felt  subjective  certainties,  and  found  in  them  no  princi- 
ple which  elevated  them  into  grounds  of  objective  validity,  we 
would  conclude  that  mysticism,  so  far  as  this  mystic  is  concerned, 
is  not  a  type  of  human  truth-getting  at  all,  had  no  positive  epis- 
temological  significance — its  value  would  lie  possibly  in  the  light 
it,  as  a  part  of  abnormal  psychology,  could  throw  on  the  normal 
processes  of  psychology,  or  it  would  have  truth-value  in  tending 
to  support  the  thesis  that  religion  is  primarily  a  matter  of  feeling, 
or  what  not. 

Whatever  value  for  objective  knowledge  could  be  grafted 
upon  it,  it  would  have  no  intrinsic  cognitive  meaning  at  all. 


4«  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

These  other  values,  ethical,  religious,  psychological,  or  lack  of 
them,  have  been  often  enough  imputed  to  mysticism  as  I  have 
already  shown;  the  questions  "What  are  the  grounds  of  cer- 
tainty in  Meister  Eckhart  ?  Can  these  grounds  of  certainty  right- 
fully claim  to  be  grounds  of  validity?" — seem  to  me  to  lead 
directly  into  the  problem  of  what,  if  any,  epistemological  signifi- 
cance such  experience  as  Eckhart's  may  have. 

Is  Meister  Eckhart's  asserted  way  of  reaching  truth,  then,  really 
a  valid  way  ?  This  question,  necessary  as  it  is  to  a  square  meet- 
ing of  the  problem,  yet  brings  with  it  methodological  difficulty. 
For  it  would  seem  that  one  ought  to  begin  by  having  clearly  in 
mind  those  conditions  which  a  valid  way  of  reaching  knowledge 
ought  to  fulfill ;  yet  if  mysticism  is — as  it  asserts — a  unique  way 
of  reaching  the  most  real  objective,  so  to  begin  would  be  to  beg 
the  question  against  the  mystical  way  of  knowing,  to  impose 
a  ready-made  conception  of  a  valid  knowing-process  upon  mys- 
ticism and  so  to  preclude  the  possibility  that  mysticism  has  any 
new  element  to  add  to  our  theories  of  human  truth-getting — which 
is  nevertheless  what  we  set  out  to  inquire  into.  This  difficulty 
in  method  can  only  be  met  by  a  gradual  process  of  comparison, 
by  examining  the  subjective  certainties  of  Meister  Eckhart  to  see 
if  there  are  any  reasonable  claims  to  validity  in  them,  and  at 
the  same  time  examining  our  idea  of  validity,  to  see  upon  what  it 
is  based,  what  its  real  meaning  and  function  is. 

In  all  cognitive  experience,  that  knowledge  and  that  alone, 
seems  sure  to  us  to  which  we  can  ascribe  objective  reference, 
which  comes,  in  the  last  analysis,  not  from  our  own  imagina- 
tions and  desires,  but  as  a  touch  of  immediacy,  a  break  from  with- 
out, often  scattering  and  disorganizing.  It  is  precisely  this  (and 
more)  which  such  knowledge  as  Meister  Eckhart's  claims  as  its 
function,  and  which  I  have  found  to  be  the  first  reason  (sub- 
jectively considered)  for  Meister  Eckhart's  certainty  in  his  knowl- 
edge. He  felt  that  his  knowledge  was  something  independent  of 
himself,  coercive.  As  first  ground  of  certainty  in  Meister  Eck- 
hart, I  find  just  this  element  of  coercion,  of  breaking  in  from 
without. 

This  shows  itself  first  (and  most  weakly) — in  a  factor  com- 
paratively scantily  and  vaguely  mentioned  by  Eckhart,  as  an 
(already-described)113'  114j  "impulse  to  inwardness."  In  spite  of 
Eckhart's  name  for  it,  we  must,  I  think,  look  upon  this  initial 


THE    GROUNDS    OF    CERTAINTY    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  43 

experience  of  mystical  cognition  as  decidedly  coercive,  as,  in  some 
sense,  objective.  It  comes  unheralded  and  with  surprise  to  the 
mystic — he  cannot  directly  will  to  achieve  it.  What  Meister  Eck- 
hart means  by  this,  is  a  common  enough  experience.  It  is 
decidedly  not  a  mere  impulse  to  introspection,  to  taking  stock 
of  oneself,  setting  one's  house  in  order.  The  "inwardness" 
seems  rather  to  be  used  as  a  metaphor,  meaning  "upwardness," 
or  "not-outwardness,"  or  any  other  vague  term  of  direction 
away  from  what  absorbs  us  partially,  leaving  fringes  of  restless- 
ness and  denial,  into  what  we  feel,  however  dimly,  should  absorb 
us  utterly.  It  is  the  experience  which  many  people  have,  in 
the  presence  of  death,  or  of  new  and  sudden  love,  or  of  certain 
aspects  of  nature — or  even,  sometimes — and  perhaps  most 
definitely — without  any  contributing  outward  cause  at  all — of 
being  gripped  in  a  kind  of  necessity  for  an  ultimate,  and  here- 
tofore unrealized,  sort  of  simplicity  and  sincerity.  It  is  not  at 
all  a  moral  experience ;  Eckhart,  for  example,  nowhere  connects 
it  with  a  sense  of  sin — it  is  rather  an  intellectual  one — as  if  one 
saw  in  a  flash  some  totality  of  life,  some  meaning,  which  in  being 
seen,  laid  the  demand  upon  one,  that  one  see  oneself  as  a  part  of 
that  life  or  meaning,  without  artificiality,  without  loneliness,  with- 
out understanding  perhaps. 

Some  such  experience  as  this  must  have  been  Eckhart's  initial 
experience;  and  no  part  of  his  experience  lost  for  him  the 
coercive  character  which  is  so  ^powerful  a  ground  of  subjective 
certainty.  This  is  next  seen  in  the  immediate  result  of  this  expe- 
rience. The  result  of  it  was  found,  for  Eckhart,  in  a  seeming 
antithesis  to  its  meaning.  For  it  was,  somehow,  a  hint  of  the 
possibility  of  a  deeper  and  more  unified  individuality  through 
knowledge — yet  its  result  is  the  most  absolute  possible  self-aban- 
donment, as  we  have  already  seen117'  118>  119 — a  self-abandonment, 
however,  whose  significance  is,  that  it  is  and  can  be  an  abandon- 
ment only  of  the  partial  aspects  of  the  self  which  have  found  ex- 
pression in  the  various  aims  and  interests  and  activities  of  the  self. 
And  this  abandonment  takes  place  as  the  result,  and  is  the 
expression  of,  that  coerciveness  in  the  object  which  we  have 
noted  as  the  first  ground  of  certainty  in  Eckhart.  Undoubtedly, 
this  abandonment  can  only  be  accomplished  by  the  sharpest 
decision  of  the  will;  yet  this  decision  is  made,  because,  to  his 
mind,  the  mystic  has  caught  sight  of  a  demanding  object,  an 


44  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

object  to  which  it  is  impossible  to  give  less  than  everything,  since 
it  is  the  total  reality. 

It  is  like  the  process,  a  hundred  times  intensified,  which  Goethe 
has  in  mind  in  Wilhelm  Meister — Wilhelm  throws  himself  into 
one  object  after  another,  yet  finds  his  satisfaction,  as  he  finds  his 
true  self,  in  none — always  there  is  a  warning  within  him  which 
says,  "Remember  (in  all  these  abstractions)  to  live."  To  the 
mystic  the  words  are,  "Remember  to  find,  after  all,  that  which 
alone  is  Real." 

Yet  the  outcome  of  this  impulse  to  inwardness  is  not  directly, 
and  of  itself  alone,  the  deepening  of  the  personality,  the  win  ling 
of  new  insight.  The  mystic,  holding  himself  in  his  tense  attitude 
of  abandonment  of  all  particularity,  of  straining  receptivity, 
which  is  no  idle  drifting,  but  an  active,  straining,  ultimate  repu- 
diation of  the  sufficiency  of  just  this  self  as  it  is  to  attain  the 
ultimate  reality,  and  so  its  own  truth,  knows  himself  finally 
to  be  gripped  in  a  reality  which  is  larger  than  he  himself,  which 
yet  floods  and  transforms  him,  in  an  immediacy  of  knowledge, 
unwalled  off  by  idea.  It  is  the  moment  of  consent  to  the  Real 
and  identification  with  it. 

But  what,  more  exactly,  is  this  immediacy?  Is  it  a  throwing 
down  of  all  conceptual  tools,  an  abandonment  to  subjective  feel- 
ing and  desire  ?  To  Eckhart  himself  it  is  the  reverse  side  of  the 
coerciveness  of  the  object  of  his  knowledge,  and  a  second  ground 
for  the  certainty  of  his  knowledge.  He  feels  himself  to  be  gripped 
indeed  in  a  larger  reality,  but  all  the  time  he  is  conscious  that 
it  is  just  his  own  immediate  experience,  that  however  coercive  and 
near  and  absorbing  the  object  may  be,  it  is  near  and  coercive  and 
absorbing  as  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  personality,  his  own  mean- 
ing. "I  am  as  necessary  to  God,"  he  says,  "as  God  is  necessary 
to  me.  The  drop  of  water  absorbed  in  the  wine  does  not  thereby 
become  wine."139 

A  third  ground  of  certainty  I  find  to  be  implied  just  in  the 
ineffable,  non-symbolic,  esoteric  character  of  this  knowledge. 
For  this  knowledge  is  essentially  esoteric.  If  it  were  not,  it 
would  be  translatable  knowledge,  knowledge  in  idea;  we  would 
have  no  problem  of  mystical  knowledge  at  all.  To  be  sure,  Eck- 
hart is  convinced  that  he  has  found  a  public  object:  "There  is  no 
one  of  you,"  he  says,  "so  unready,  so  unpracticed,  so  weak  in 
knowledge  or  so  far  from  God  as  not  to  be  able  to  find  the  joy 


THE    GROUNDS    OF    CERTAINTY    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  45 

(of  this  knowledge)  in  himself."140  He  believes  indeed,  that  this 
knowledge  can  belong  to  everyone,  but  that  it  is  in  its  nature, 
esoteric,  hidden,  not  to  be  communicated.  However  much  he 
may  tell  his  hearers  about  it,  he  can  only  show  it  to  them  "dimly, 
in  a  glass  of  reason"141— only  those  who  are  "friends  of  God 
and  at  home  with  him"  will  understand  ;142  "many  poor  people 
will  go  home  and  say,  'I  will  sit  in  my  corner  and  eat  my  bread 
and  serve  God'  "143 — and  these  must  remain  in  their  ignorance 
and  never  learn  what  the  others  know  "who  go  out  after  God 
in  poverty  and  renunciation."144  Meister  Eckhart  has  found 
indeed  a  public  object,  but  one  which  cannot  be  grasped  in  idea; 
not  its  publicity  is  ground  of  its  certainty,  but  rather  its  unique- 
ness. Although  it  is  never  completely  expressible  to  any  other 
human  soul,  the  mystic  dares  "in  his  loneliness  to  be  infinitely  Jj 
certain." 

How  can  this  ineffability  be  a  ground  of  certainty?  One  would 
expect  to  find  it  rather  a  ground  of  inner  self -doubting,  of  de- 
spair of  surety,  even.  Yet  when  one  considers  the  reason  for  the 
inexpressibility  of  Meister  Eckhart's  knowledge,  one  sees  that 
it  must  indeed  be  ineffable,  that  this  ineffability  is  the  expression 
of  its  very  nature.  Meister  Eckhart  has  had  an  experience  of 
utmost  reality,  and  one  which  is  inexpressible — why?  Because 
it  is  an  experience  of  the  fountain-head  of  all  determination,  of 
the  subject-character  of  the  whole,  of  all  that  really  is.  If  this 
experience  were  (to  Meister  Eckhart)  a  knowledge  of  less  than 
the  totality,  it  could  be  readily  expressed,  readily  translated  into 
terms  other  than  itself.  But  as  it  is,  Meister  Eckhart  has  the 
experience  of  a  major  certainty,  which  gives  the  lie  to  all  lesser 
certainties — it  is  not  this,  nor  that,  the  ultimately  real — it  is  just 
no  predicates  at  all,  for  no  predicates  exhaust  the  meaning  of 
the  subject,  and  all  predicates,  taken  as  exhaustive,  deny  it.  To 
Meister  Eckhart,  because  this  vision  is  ineffable  (and  absolutely 
real),  it  is  a  vision  of  the  whole — because  it  is  a  vision  of  the 
whole,  it  is  ineffable.  Yet  the  relationship  here  is  not,  to  Meister 
Eckhart,  a  logical  one.  His  experience  comes  to  him,  not  as  a 
knowledge  of  the  whole,  but  as  a  sort  of  whole-knowledge,  a 
reality-knowledge ;  apart  from  it  nothing  matters,  neither  "holy 
practices"  nor  "knowledge  of  the  creatures,"  nor  God  himself, 
for  apart  from  it  nothing  really  is.  Nothing  to  the  mystic  can 
overturn  this  knowledge  or  invalidate  it,  for  nothing  exists  hid- 


46  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

j  den  from  it — the  details  of  life  are  the  unimportant  results  of 
•   the  subject-nature  of  reality.     This  is  Meister  Eckhart's  major 
ground  of  certainty — he  has  a  total  knowledge. 

These  then  are  the  grounds  of  certainty  I  have  found  in  Meister 
Eckhart:  his  object  makes  a  demand  upon  him  for  its  own  sake, 
claims  all  his  will  and  attention  in  one  act  of  concentration,  is 
essentially  not  "made-up"  to  him,  but  objective,  coercive;  sec- 
ond, his  experience  seems  to  him  one  of  direct  perception  of 
fact,  one  as  immediately  "there"  as  sensation;  thirdly,  this 
knowledge  is  somehow  an  entering  into,  a  taking  possession  of, 
that  dim  sense  of  the  quality  of  the  whole  which  forms  the  basis 
of  every  judgment.  It  is  no  longer  a  piling  together  of  attributes, 
but  a  flash  of  acquaintance  with  the  subject  of  those  attributes — 
acquaintance  all  along  implied  in  the  possibility  of  the  piling- 
together. 

Can  these  grounds  of  certainty  be  judged  to  be  grounds  of 
validity?  Have  they  any  principle  in  them  which  gives  them 
universal  truth-value? 

The  whole  question  of  a  valid  way  of  knowing  is  a  difficult  one. 
For  the  logic  books  define  it  as  a  way  of  knowing  which  is 
coherent;  which  establishes  one  judgment  by  virtue  of  its  con- 
sistency with  another  judgment  or  other  judgments;  which 
"explains"  by  finding  unknown  factors  which  either  establish  the 
consistency  of  one  judgment  with  another,  or  overthrow  one 
judgment  or  the  other.  Validity,  the  books  say,  is  not  the  quality 
of  a  single  judgment,  but  rather  a  matter  of  the  relation  of  judg- 
ments between  each  other.  One  judgment  is  judged  valid  by  vir- 
tue of  its  agreement  with  a  second  judgment,  which  again,  has 
no  intrinsic  validity  of  its  own.145 

Yet  if  validity  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  single  judgment,  how 
is  it  really  to  be  found  at  all  ?  Where  novelty  arises  in  the  search 
for  knowledge,  is  where  the  old,  having  been  seen  together,  com- 
prehensively, is  found  lacking  and  unsatisfactory — the  new, 
higher  truth  must  be  so.  And  the  process  which  follows,  of  test- 
ing the  new  judgment,  is  not  so  much  the  making  of  the  judg- 
ments agree  at  whatever  price,  as  often  the  throwing  aside  of  the 
old  body  of  judgments  entirely,  or  the  transforming  of  them  to 
accord  with  the  new.  The  new  has  been  found  to  be  valid — as 
much  by  its  contradiction  of  the  old,  as  by  agreement  with  it — 


THE    GROUNDS    OF    CERTAINTY    IN    MEISTER    ECKHART.  47 

and  the  old,  in  receiving  truth-value  in  the  light  of  the  new, 
becomes  itself  new.  Truth-value,  if  it  is  to  be  found  at  all,  is 
not  to  be  found  as  a  quality  of  ever  wider  and  more  indefinite 
systems,  but  at  some  particular  moment,  in  some  particular  judg- 
ments, which  the  holder  is  prepared  to  defend  against  the  world, 
consistent  or  not  consistent. 145a  % 

We  find  the  mystic  defending  such  judgments  as  these,  and  the 
fact  that  their  agreements  within  or  without  the  mystic  experi- 
ence is  not  brought  forward  as  a  ground  of  their  validity,  need 
not  prevent  us  from  nevertheless  looking  further  for  other 
possible  principles  of  truth-value. 

Is  the  fact  that  the  mystic  declares  his  object  to  be  coercive, 
however  powerful  it  may  be  as  a  ground  of  subjective  certainty, 
likewise  a  ground  of  validity  ?  It  is  sure,  that  the  goal  of  knowl- 
edge is  an  object  which  shall  be  compelling  for  its  own  sake. 
We  mean  by  truth  something  which,  however  much  we  may 
examine  and  test  and  turn  it,  shall  yet  force  us  to  acknowledge 
it,  which  shall  exert  control  over  our  reason,  our  will  and  feeling. 
The  old  theories  of  validity — inconceivability  of  the  opposite, 
clear  and  distinct  conception — acknowledged  this  element  of 
valid  knowledge  and  sought,  without  deep  analysis  of  it,  to  make 
it  the  only  one.  Modern  logical  theories  of  the  universally  valid 
— that  which,  in  being  denied,  is  asserted — make  use  of  the 
same  factor.  Yet  we  cannot  assert  that  we  have  here  found  a 
principle  of  validity  in  the  mystic  knowledge.  We  have  found  the 
mystic's  experience  to  be  such  that  it  is  absolutely  coercive  for 
him.  He  is  indeed  invulnerable.  And  we  have  found  this  to  be 
a  necessary  element  in  any  true  object  of  knowledge.  But  that 
such  experience  ever  would  or  ought  to  be,  coercive  for  us,  is 
by  no  means  asserted. 

How  does  it  stand  with  the  second  ground  of  certainty,  that  of 
immediacy?  Here  the  peculiarity  is,  that  in  all  the  compelling- 
ness  of  the  object,  the  mystic  can  say  "I,  too."  He  finds  the  ulti-  J 
mate  object — he  finds  also,  and  in  it,  himself.  It  was  in  some 
such  principle  of  validity  as  this  that  Kant  rested  the  final  answer 
to  the  question  "How  are  a  priori  synthetic  judgments  possible?" 
They  are  possible  if  the  mind  in  knowing  is  not  only  receptive 
but  also  active — if  the  objects  of  its  knowledge  are  conditioned 
by  its  own  activity.  But  this  again,  belongs  to  the  private  experi- 


4  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

ence  of  the  mystic.  We  have  no  such  experience,  we  say,  "sen- 
sational in  its  epistemological  quality/'146  and  yet  not  of  sense- 
objects,  with  which  to  compare  and  corroborate. 

The  third  point  of  view  under  which  we  found  the  mystic's 
knowledge  certain,  at  least  for  him,  was  far  more  fundamental 
than  the  other  two.  For  granting  for  an  instant  the  possibility 
of  such  subject-knowledge  as  the  mystic  asserts,  of  knowledge 
concerned  not  with  the  what,  but  with  the  ultimate  that,  we  see 
that  it  would  have  to  be  both  coercive  and  immediate.  Coercive : 
for  if  reality  itself  has  not  the  force  of  compulsion,  then  no  such 
force  exists;  immediate — for  to  admit  of  mediation  would  be  to 
destroy  the  hypothesis  we  are  examining,  to  posit  once  again  a 
knowing  concerned  with  the  what,  the  peripheral  character  of 
reality.  The  two  factors  then,  of  coercion  and  immediacy  which 
are  merely,  however  reasonably,  factors  of  subjective  certainty, 
would  be  derivatives  of  the  central  character  of  whole-knowledge. 
Is  this  whole-knowledge  a  possible,  a  real  experience?  Can  we 
find  a  principle  upon  which  it  is  valid  ? 

Certainly,  one  might  grant  that  he  who  had  knowledge  of 
reality  in  its  totality  would  necessarily  be  possessed  of  valid 
knowledge;  but  what  one  ordinarily  means  by  a  knowledge  of 
the  whole  of  things,  and  Eckhart's  whole-knowledge,  are  two  very 
different  things.  In  the  first  place,  this  mystical  experience,  far 
from  being  a  total  one,  seems  a  very  partial — an  essentially  one- 
sided and  incomplete — one.  All  the  ordinary  avenues  to  knowl- 
edge— the  doors  of  sense,  and  of  logical  reflection — of  compari- 
son and  analysis  and  inference — ideally  are  closed  to  the  mystic, 
so  far  as  his  mystical  experience  is  concerned.  The  ideal  is 
one  of  attention  to  the  narrowest  possible  residue  of  con- 
scious life, — and  though  one  may  believe  that  the  ideal,  in  its 
extreme  form,  never  is  nor  can  be  achieved,  that  always  some 
voice  of  sense,  or  of  inference,  must  remain,  yet  the  experience 
remains  logically,  a  narrower  and  more  partial  experience  than 
the  dullest  experience  of  normal  conscious  life.  What  meaning 
has  the  mystic  when  he  says  that  his  experience  is  one  of  total- 
ity, of  the  whole  of  reality?  Can  this  meaning  be  justified? 

To  the  mystic,  the  whole  is  not  a  thing  of  quantity — an  aggre- 
gate of  finites,  though  infinitely  great,  would  never  make  an 
infinite  to  him;  the  whole  is  rather,  so  far  as  it  can  be  called  a 
category  at  all,  a  category  of  quality.  Our  idea  of  totalities 


THE    GROUNDS    OF    CERTAINTY    IN    MEISTER   ECKHART.  49 

and  wholes  is  based  upon  our  knowledge  of  the  wholes  of 
sense-perception,  which  we  see  as  composed  of  many  parts,  as 
more  or  less  arbitrarily  compoundable  into  greater  wholes,  or 
analyzable  into  lesser  ones,  at  our  own  will;  and  though  our 
minds  are  staggered  at  the  vast,  inconceivable  synthesis  of  the 
universe  on  the  one  hand,  and  at  the  elusiveness  of  the  ultimate 
whole  on  the  other  hand,  we  yet  consider  that  such  experiences 
of  quantities  are  the  only  experience  of  the  whole  that  we  have, 
and  that  our  final  knowledge  of  the  whole  must  be  built  up  out 
of  aggregates  and  syntheses  of  lesser  wholes. 

Yet  might  it  not  be  that  our  entire  life  of  thought  and  reason  is 
based  on  a  whole-experience  of  another  sort — a  whole-experience 
essentially  like  the  mystic's,  though  unanalyzed  and  unconsid- 
ered — and  that  the  process  of  acquiring  knowledge  is  the  process 
of  filling  out,  of  making  concrete  and  real,  this  idea  of  the  whole, 
without  which  we  could  have  no  knowledge  at  all,  and  to  which 
we  continually  turn  in  our  work  of  predication?  There  are  indi- 
cations enough  which  point  this  way;  there  are  puzzles  enough 
which  would  find  their  solution  in  it. 

Let  us  take  for  instance,  this  very  problem  of  validity.147  Let 
us  consider  what  it  means  that  we  always  judge,  and  must  judge, 
our  judgments  to  be  either  valid  or  invalid.  We  imply  that  we 
consider  them  either  true  or  false;  and  if  we  make  up  theories 
which  say  that  we  claim  for  our  judgments  not  truth- value,  but 
use- value,  we  nevertheless  do  claim  for  these  latter  judgments 
validity,  truth-value — we  imply  that  other  theories  of  truth  are 
invalid,  false.  We  cannot  get  away  from  our  notion  of,  and 
claim  to,  truth-value.  Yet  how  is  any  claim  to  truth-value  ever  /( 
possible,  ever  justified?  Not  only  does  every  judgment  go  beyond  ' 
what  the  facts  it  is  founded  upon  directly  and  infallibly  war- 
rant, but  no  facts  ever  directly  warrant  a  claim  to  substantiality, 
truth-value.  All  the  items  of  our  experience  are  dissolvable  into 
illusion-elements,  unreality ;  our  most  certain  facts  are,  in  the  last 
analysis,  but  subject-matter  for  doubt.  Yet  that  this  is  so,  that 
we  continually  find  ourselves  in  error,  even  that  we  believe,  per- 
haps, that  no  truth  is  possible  for  us,  that  we  must  remain  con- 
tinually in  error,  implies  that  somehow  we  are  at  the  heart  of 
truth,  do  know  consciously,  though  not  particularly,  in  a  uni- 
versal, absolutely  sure,  way,  what  truth  is — otherwise  we  could 
never  differentiate  error  from  it,  never  consciously  find  our  judg- 


50  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

ments  wrong,  invalid.  Thus  we  find  that,  in  order  that  our 
notion  of  validity  may  have  any  objective  meaning  at  all,  it  must 
presuppose  a  direct,  non-symbolic,  whole-knowledge — a  whole- 
knowledge,  not  of  the  items,  but  of  the  real  nature  of  truth, 
essentially  like  the  whole-knowledge  which  we  have  seen  the 
mystic  make  claim  to.  We  have  found  here,  not  a  principle  of 
validity  in  mystic  knowledge,  but  a  relation  at  once  more  inti- 
mate, more  primitive,  and  more  fundamental,  than  that,  between 
the  mystic  knowledge  and  validity — we  have  found  that  without 
such  knowledge  as  the  mystic  names,  not  only  is  no  single  claim 
to  validity  justified,  in  the  last  analysis,  but  also  that  without 
positing  it,  no  consistent  meaning  for  our  notion  of  validity  can 
be  found  at  all.  We  get  here  the  hint  of  an  intimate  and  organic 
relation  between  mysticism  and  ordinary  thinking,  the  final  justi- 
fication for  the  treatment  of  the  problem  of  mysticism  as  an 
epistemological  one ;  but  in  order  that,  in  tracing  out  this  organic 
relationship,  our  results  may  be  as  general  and  as  sure  as  possi- 
ble, it  is  desirable  at  this  point  to  see  our  results  borne  out  and 
corroborated  by  other  mystical  experience  than  Meister  Eckhart's. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  MYSTICAL  MOTIVE;  AS  SEEN  IN  ST.  BERNARD 

OF  CLAIRVAUX,  JOACHIM  OF  FLORIS, 

BONAVENTURA. 

Our  results  so  far  have  been  gained  from  a  somewhat  detailed 
study  of  a  single  mystic,  and  may  be  summarized  as  follows: 
Mysticism,  having,  of  course,  strong  emotional  factors,  is  not  dis- 
solvable into  a  feeling  relation,  nor  into  a  voluntaristic  attitude 
toward  life,  nor  into  a  combination  of  the  two.  Mysticism  is 
essentially  a  problem  for  epistemology  and  that  because  (i)  in 
its  germ,  as  well  as  in  its  highest  fruition  we  find  its  aim,  and 
its  claim,  to  be  always  cognitive,  the  achievement  of  a  truth-value, 
and  because  (2)  quite  apart  from  the  consideration  just  men- 
tioned, mysticism  demands  epistemological  treatment  on  more 
general  grounds.  These  are,  that  mysticism  sets  forth  in  its 
sharpest  form  the  paradox  that  really  does  lie  at  the  center  of  an 
ideational  conception  of  reason.  For  if  we  consider  thinking 
wholly  as  a  symbolic,  ideational  process  (and  if  it  is  ideational,  it 
is  necessarily  symbolic)  then  we  are  confronted  with  the  dilemma 
that  either  reality  must  be  completely  unknowable,  so  that  the 
more  we  know  about  it  the  farther  we  are  away  from  it  (for 
the  more  completely  it  is  symbolized)  or  if  knowable,  reality 
itself  must  be  symbol,  idea-stuff,  less  sharp  and  literal,  less  "real" 
than  the  dullest  moment  of  particular  conscious  experience. 
When  put  in  such  a  bare  form,  the  dilemma  appears  so  sharp 
as  to  be  trivial ;  but  the  mystic  points  out  that  it  is  inescapable — 
that  truth  can  only  be  gotten  in  some  non-symbolic  insight,  in 
some  immediate  conscious  contact  with  the  most  Real.  Accept- 
ing this  paradox  of  the  mystic's,  we  tried  to  find  out  just  what  the 
mystic  means  by  his  asserted  immediate  contact  with  the  most 
Real — tried  to  find  out  if  here  the  mystic  met  in  any  valid  sense 
with  an  objective  Real,  if  he  could  really  show  us  a  world  any 
more  knowable  or  ascertainable  than  the  world  of  idea  which  he 
repudiates  as  illusion.  We  found,  indeed,  an  empty  world — the 
house  of  the  mystic  swept  and  garnished,  standing  empty — yet 
we  found  a  world  vastly  fruitful  in  its  contact  with  the  everyday 
world,  vastly  significant.  For  the  essential  characteristic  of  the 


52  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

mystical  knowledge  was  that  it  was  a  sort  of  abiding  vision  of 
the  whole,  in  whose  light  the  details  of  knowledge  took  on 
changed  value,  changed  relation.  When  we  examined  further 
the  grounds  of  certainty  of  this  knowledge  to  discover,  if  possible, 
any  grounds  of  objective  validity  (for  the  purpose  of  finding 
light  for  the  solution  of  the  paradox  of  thinking),  we  found  that 
only  this  same  element  of  being  whole-knowledge,  could  possibly 
be  a  principle  of  validity. 

Yet  in  examining  this  essential  character  of  mysticism,  we 
found  it  to  be  hardly  a  principle  of  validity — rather  something 
more  primitive  and  fundamental  than  that.  We  found  just  this 
direct  acquaintance  with  the  nature  of  reality,  truth,  to  be  a  pre- 
supposition of  the  possibility  of  validity— that  which  gives  mean- 
ing and  objective  value  to  our  notion  of  validity,  as  well  as  the 
final  source  of  any  claim  to  validity.  Yet  we  feared  to  build  an 
analysis  of  thinking  on  this  basis,  slenderly  supported  by  an 
examination  of  the  work  of  a  single  mystic.  In  order  then  to 
make  our  results  more  general,  and  at  the  same  time  to  clarify 
further  our  idea  of  the  nature  and  working  force  of  the  mystic's 
whole-knowledge,  it  is  necessary  at  this  point  to  see  our  results 
borne  out  and  incorporated,  if  possible,  by  an  interpretation  of 
other  mystical  experiences  as  widely  removed  from  one  another 
in  outward  circumstances  as  possible. 

For  this  purpose  I  have  chosen  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  (1091- 
1153),  Joachim  of  Floris  (1145-1202),  and  John  Fidanza,  or 
Bonaventura  (1221-1274).  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  is  called  by 
Catholic  historians  of  philosophy  the  real  founder  of  mysticism 
in  the  Middle  Ages148  (dependent  of  course  on  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite)  ;  Bonaventura  is  called  its  greatest  mediaeval  expo- 
nent;149 these  two  men  were  early  canonized  by  the  Catholic 
church,  while  Joachim  of  Floris  was  a  heretic,  followers  of  whom 
were  persecuted  by  Bonaventura.150  But  there  are  less  historical 
and  more  critical  reasons  for  the  choice  of  these  mystics.  They 
each  present,  in  a  peculiarly  sharpened  form,  the  problem  of  the 
cognitive  aspect  of  mysticism,  because  the  doctrines  of  Bernard 
and  Bonaventura,  when  shorn  of  the  scholastic  contents,  seem  so 
easily  and  almost  inevitably  reducible  to  a  pure  religious  feeling- 
relation  of  love  and  adoration,  and  because  the  tremendous  veri- 
ties of  Joachim,  asserted  in  his  allegorizing  prophetical  way,  have 
long  since  turned  out  to  be  fantastic  dreams.  In  the  works  of 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE.  53 

these  writers,  if  at  all,  we  ought  to  find  the  refutation  of  our 
thesis — we  ought  to  find  here,  if  anywhere,  that  mysticism  is 
sometimes  without  cognitive  content  and  aim,  that  it  is  sometimes 
merely  ennobling  emotion,  or  passionate,  fanatical  dreaming  due 
to  abnormal  associative  processes. 

To  state  first  the  problem  of  St.  Bernard  as  a  mystic:  His 
life,  as  one  of  intense  ethical  activity,  has  been  often  enough 
used  to  show  that  mysticism  is  primarily  a  voluntaristic  attitude, 
a  way  of  life.151  After  only  three  years  in  the  Cloister  of  Cis- 
teaux,  he  was  chosen  Abbot  of  the  Cloister  of  Clairvaux; 
there  his  energetic  and  powerful  nature  so  showed  itself  that 
in  1130  when  an  antipope  brought  forward  claims  against 
Innocent  II,  Bernard  was  called  to  avert  the  threatening  schism. 
Complicated  as  matters  were,  Bernard  succeeded  in  bringing 
about  the  universal  recognition  of  Innocent  and  Anaclet's  vol- 
untary withdrawal;  he  was  continually  engaged  in  controversy 
with  Abelard  and  others;  when  Arnold  of  Brescia  tried  to  stir 
up  the  Romans  against  the  rule  of  the  Pope,  only  Bernard  was 
able  to  quell  the  storm  and  reestablish  peace ;  the  second  Crusade, 
in  1 147,  was  his  work ;  he  was  responsible  for  seeking  out  many 
heresies,  but  he  always  tried  to  bring  the  heretics,  by  kindness 
and  protection,  back  into  the  church ;  moreover,  he  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  speak  boldly  against  the  corruptions  of  the  church  to  the 
Pope  himself,  and  demand  of  him  that  these  corruptions  be  cor- 
rected.151 Such  a  statement  of  the  ethical  activity  of  Bernard's 
life  shows  a  man  of  tremendous  convictions  and  ambitions ;  one 
is  tempted  to  wonder,  in  the  face  of  the  steadfast  orthodoxy  of 
his  mysticism,  and  his  life  so  occupied  with  things  of  this  world, 
whether  after  all,  in  his  case  at  least,  mysticism  was  not  the  emo- 
tional rewording  of  the  accepted  creed,  by  a  passionate  nature 
which  could  not  believe  coldly. 

Bernard  himself  would  have  said  that  the  final  outcome  of  all 
mystical  striving  should  be  union  with  God  in  love;  he  gives  as 
the  ground  principle  and  culmination  of  the  truth  that  he  has  to 
offer  this,  that  the  reason  why  we  must  love  God  is  God  him- 
self, that  the  measure  with  which  we  must  love  him  is  to  lover 
beyond  all  measure.  (Causa  diligendi  Deum  Deus  est,  modus, 
sine  modo  diligere).152  The  reasons  Bernard  gives  for  such 
statements  are  genuinely  scholastic  ones  ;153  the  whole  thing 
seems  all  unfounded  on  any  mystical  insight.  It  is  a  natural  law, 


54  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

says  the  Saint,  that  we  know  and  love  God ;  it  is  also  a  law  of 
reason,  since  we  are  indebted  to  him  for  all  the  goods  both  of 
body  and  soul  that  we  enjoy.154  This  love  of  God  is  founded  on 
humility  and  self-knowledge;  it  proceeds  through  the  four 
neatly  divided  steps  of  love  of  ourselves,  love  of  God  for  our 
own  sakes,  love  of  God  for  his  own  sake,  and  finally  love  of  our- 
selves and  everything  else  only  for  the  sake  of  God — which  final 
stage  is,  according  to  Bernard,  the  perfection  of  love  to  God155 
and  the  stage  which  we  experience  in  the  instants  of  mystical 
ecstacy.  Is  this  ecstacy  merely  a  feeling-relation?  Did  Ber- 
nard in  truth  experience  nothing  in  it  but  an  emotion  of  love 
toward  an  ideal  object? 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Bernard  considers  the  mystical  ecstacy 
as  the  final  stage  in  the  growing  love  of  God,  we  find  him  actually 
describing  it  always  in  cognitive  terms.158  The  reason  for  that, 
and  the  explication  of  St.  Bernard's  apparently  contradictory 
position,  is  that  to  him  God  was  Truth  itself.  He  did  not  think 
of  God  under  the  forms  of  Being,  or  Goodness,  or  supreme  Jus- 
tice, as  his  contemporaries  did,  so  much  as  Truth  itself,  the 
supreme  cognitive  satisfaction.  Thus  we  find  him  saying,  "Oh 
Truth,  thou  homeland  of  exiles  and  final  resting  place  of  the  soul ! 
I  perceive  thee  truly  indeed,  but  I  shall  not  enter  into  thee, 
held  back  as  I  am  by  my  sins,  which  render  me  unworthy 
to  enter  into  thy  august  presence."157  God  was  truth  to  Ber- 
nard, primarily  a  cognitive  value,  love  of  God  was  full  perception 
of  the  truth,  the  life  of  mystical  love  was  the  life  of  true  wisdom, 
not  because  of  any  practical  value,  but  because,  in  the  Saint's  own 
words,  "he  who  possesses  this  love  of  God  possesses  true  wisdom 
in  that  he  discerns  all  things  according  to  that  which  they  truly 
are."158 

It  remains  to  consider  this  cognitive  element,  since  cognitive 
element  there  is,  more  closely.  We  find  Bernard  insisting  that 
he  has  found  an  unmediated  way  of  knowledge  which  proceeds 
by  the  utmost  concentration.  Thus  he  says  of  consideration, 
which  is  a  sort  of  preliminary  to  contemplation,  that  it  is 
"intensa  ad  investigandum  cogitatio,  vel  intentio  animi  investi- 
gantis  verum,"159  while  contemplation  itself  is  "verus  certusque 
intuitus  animis  de  quacunque  re,  sive  apprehensio  rei  non 
dubia."160  This  true  and  certain  and  intense  intuition  of  the 
spirit  into  the  nature  of  its  object,  Bernard  seems  to  hold  possi- 


THE   MYSTICAL   MOTIVE.  55 

ble  in  the  case  of  all  objects,  though  of  supreme  value  only  in  the 
case  of  the  supreme  object.  Thus  he  says:  "The  things  about  us 
are  not  in  the  least  grasped  by  words  (discursive  reasoning)  ; 
they  are  revealed  by  the  spirit.  It  is  necessary  that  contempla- 
tion should  search  out,  that  prayer  should  demand,  and  that 
sanctity  should  obtain  (that  truth)  which  the  word  is  unable  to 
attain."161 

We  see  in  this  and  in  similar  quotations,  that  for  Bernard  there 
existed  some  very  intimate  relation  between  the  world  of  mysti- 
cal insight  and  the  everyday  world,  not  only  morally  and  ethically, 
but  cognitively  as  well — that  the  first  acted  in  some  sense  as  a 
mediator  for  the  second — or,  more  exactly,  that  no  more  in  the 
"natural"  than  in  the  "spiritual"  realm  was  truth  obtainable 
without  insight.  What  was  the  nature  of  this  insight? 

An  answer  to  this  question  can  only  be  given  after  considera- 
tion of  a  few  direct  quotations  from  St.  Bernard.  He  says,  for 
example,  in  speaking  of  the  contemplative  life,  the  life  in  which 
this  insight  is  won :  "The  child  of  heaven  has  always  before  his 
eyes  the  mirror  in  which  he  sees  all  things  most  clearly.  He  sees 
the  Word  and  in  the  Word  that  which  has  been  made  by  the 
Word;  he  has  no  reason  for  trying  to  win  from  the  creatures 
knowledge  of  the  creator.  He  does  not  even  need,  in  order  to 
know  the  creatures,  to  descend  among  them ;  he  sees  them 
(directly)  in  a  manner  more  excellent  than  they  are  them- 
selves."162 This  passage  expresses  partially,  of  course,  what 
might  be  called  St.  Bernard's  doctrine  of  ideas;  but  applied  as 
it  was  to  human  experience,  it  expresses  also  in  positive  form, 
that  same  sense  of  knowing  in  some  way  the  universal  character 
of  reality,  which  Eckhart  expressed  so  passionately  in  negative 
form.  Just  as  Eckhart  refused  to  characterize  in  any  way  the 
most  Real,  the  "Godhead,"  lest  he  should  make  it  seem  that  the 
knowledge  he  had  achieved  was  just  another  instance  of  the 
knowledge  of  description,  knowledge  about,  rather  than  the 
direct  knowledge  of  acquaintance  with  reality,  without  any 
medium  of  idea,  so  Bernard  here  expresses  the  positive  side  of 
this  same  sort  of  insight,  in  saying  that  he  who  has  attained  to  a 
vision  of  the  whole,  sees  and  interprets  thereafter  all  things  in 
the  light  of  that  vision. 

Bernard  seems  to  have  a  very  keen  sense,  expressing  a  keen 
experience,  of  the  difference  between  "knowledge  about"  and 


56  MYSTICISM   AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

"acquaintance"  with.  Just  as  a  man  born  blind  may  have  a 
certain  knowledge  about  the  color  red,  perhaps  know  all  the 
relations  that  it  stands  in  according  to  the  physics  text-book,  per- 
haps know  that  "this  other  object,  which  I  know  directly  to  be 
of  such  and  such  a  shape,  feel,  odor,  name,  is  also,  I  am  told, 
red,"  although  the  subject  of  his  knowledge  will  always  remain 
a  meaningless  X  to  him,  so  Bernard  would  say  that  a  man  may 
have  descriptive  knowledge  about  the  world,  reality,  but  this 
knowledge  will  always  remain  more  or  less  vague,  uncertain,  even 
false,  until  he  has  a  certain  direct  acquaintance  with  the  whole, 
not  considered  as  an  aggregate,  but  considered  as  a  Substance, 
a  Subject.  For  to  Bernard,  as.  to  Eckhart,  the  mystical  insight 
was  not  an  intuition  of  new  truths,  so  much  as  a  certain  abiding 
knowledge  of  values,  which  made  possible  the  knowing  of  any 
truth — and  whose  ultimate  aim  was  the  knowledge  of  the  most 
Real.  "The  ultimate  object  with  which  one  must  occupy  oneself, 
it  is  to  know  the  things  of  God/'163  In  conclusion,  one  must  say 
that  St.  Bernard  asserts  an  unmediated  knowledge  by  direct 
experience,  of  the  genuine  character  of  the  world.  He  somehow 
knows  more  and  more  truly  through  his  mystical  insight  into  what 
the  real  is,  than  through  all  his  school-reasoning. 

Joachim  of  Floris,  distracted  by  the  evils  of  the  world,  the  cor- 
ruptions of  the  church,  and  the  general  demoralization  of  society, 
took  refuge  in  a  passionate  hope  in  the  future.164  The  pro- 
phetic and  fantastic  utterances  he  gave  this  hope,  pass  for  his 
"mysticism"  because  they  are  dark  and  mysterious  and  hard  to 
understand.  But  the  kernel  of  mysticism  at  the  heart  of  Joa- 
chim's teaching  is  farther  to  seek  than  that.  Joachim's  doctrines 
are  presented  chiefly  in  four  books,  three  of  which  are  known 
together  as  the  "Eternal  Evangel" — the  Concordia  veteris  et 
novi  Testamenti,  the  Commentarium  de  Apocalypse,  the  Psal- 
terium  decem  chordarum,  the  Divina  prorsus  in  Jeremiam  Pro- 
phetam  Inter pretatio.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  find  out, 
Joachim  only  once  describes  a  mystical  ecstacy.  This  he  does  in 
the  Preface  to  the  Psalterium.165  He  had  sought  for  the  truth 
with  all  possible  zeal,  he  says,  and  had  found  it  even  farther 
removed  from  him.  But  as  he  once  went,  with  discouragement 
concerning  the  true  wisdom  and  yet  with  yearning  for  it,  to  the 
devotional  singing,  suddenly  much  truth  was  revealed  to  him  that 
he  had  not  been  able  to  attain  to  in  study  and  search.  But  this 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE.  57 

revealed  truth  had  again  escaped  him,  busied  as  he  had  been  about 
his  cloister  duties.  Several  years  after,  at  the  Passover  feast,  in 
the  Cloister  Casamare  he  had  started  to  sing  psalms  to  the  honor 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  when  just  as  he  stepped  before  the  altar,  a 
great  doubt  arose  in  his  mind  about  the  Holy  Trinity.  How  could 
one  God  be  three  persons,  and  three  persons  one  God,  he  had 
asked  himself.  Terrified,  he  called  upon  the  Holy  Ghost  and 
besought  him  to  make  clear  this  mystery.  Then  there  came 
before  him  during  the  singing  the  figure  of  his  ten-stringed  lute 
and  in  it  so  clear  a  picture  of  the  trinity  that  he  had  broken  out 
into  a  loud  song  of  praise.165 

I  have  related  this  incident  partly  to  show  how  far  down  in  the 
scale  of  developed  mystics  Joachim  must  be  placed,  partly  to 
show  the  quality  of  his  mind,  and  partly  to  acknowledge  that 
Joachim  does  nevertheless  have  a  claim  on  our  attention  as  a 
mystic — and  just  because  mysticism  is  so  little  developed  in  him, 
just  because  he  is  so  unable  to  think  otherwise  than  in  pictures, 
he  affords  a  good  opportunity  for  testing  the  generality  of  our 
conclusions  about  mysticism. 

For  the  rest,  all  of  Joachim's  ideas,  a  welter  of  fantastic 
numerical  allegories,  in  which  the  existence  of  the  world  is  divided 
into  three  periods,  that  of  the  Old  Testament,  that  of  the  new, 
and  that  of  the  Everlasting  Gospel,  to  begin  in  1260  A.  D.,  the 
time  of  perfect  knowledge  and  righteousness,166  are  environ- 
mental. 

Engelhardt  says  on  this  point,167  "The  idea  of  the  Eternal 
Gospel,  a  time  of  perfect  righteousness  in  the  church,  was  in  the 
first  centuries  of  Christianity  almost  universally  accepted.  This 
idea  gradually  lost  its  ancient  form,  but  continually  reappeared. 
.  .  .  Among  the  different  forms,  under  which  this  idea  appeared 
in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church,  one  is  especially  common, 
and  has  already  appeared  in  very  early  times — that  one,  namely, 
which  conceives  of  the  development  of  true  knowledge  as  a  pro- 
gression in  three  revelations,  so  that  the  Old  Testament  with  its 
time  appears  as  the  first,  the  New  with  its  times  as  the  second, 
and  the  time  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  prepared  for  by  both  the  other 
stages,  as  the  third  step  in  the  development.  Under  this  form, 
we  meet  the  idea  of  a  perfect  condition  of  righteousness  about 
to  begin,  in  the  works  of  the  Abbot  Joachim/'167  Joachim 
developed  this  idea,  indeed,  in  a  peculiar  and  personal  way — not, 


5 8  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

however,  as  if  it  had  been  made  his  own  through  a  mystical 
insight,  but  rather  by  far-fetched  numerical  allegories  and  analo- 
gies, by  hairsplitting  dialectic,  as  if  he  had  laid  hold  upon  this 
idea  not  through  insight,  but  as  a  support  for  it — as  a  proof  to 
himself  that  something  real  had  been  experienced,  as  a  justifi- 
cation for  some  dim  seizure  of  truth  which  he  somehow  could 
never  bring  to  expression. 

One  cannot,  then,  even  attempt  to  look  for  a  mystical  insight 
in  the  ideas  which  Joachim  expressed,  however  difficult  and  mys- 
terious they  may  be.  Were  it  not  for  a  vehement  sort  of  non- 
logical  certainty  expressed — a  certainty  all  the  more  personal 
and  vigorous  for  being  attendant  upon  traditional  and  environ- 
mental ideas, — one  would  be  tempted  to  dismiss  Joachim  from  the 
ranks  of  mystics  altogether.  But  the  very  inarticulateness  of  this 
certainty  of  Joachim's  points  at  least  in  the  direction  of  mystical 
insight.  Just  because  he  was  never  satisfied  with  the  form  of  his 
thought,  so  that  he  continually  expressed  anew,  in  a  hundred 
different  ingenious  ways,  what  he  held  for  a  central  truth,  one 
comes  to  feel  more  and  more  strongly  that  Joachim  had  somehow 
grasped  the  whole-character  of  truth,  reality,  but  that  he  was 
utterly  unable  to  articulate  it,  even  to  show  the  truth  "dimly,  in 
a  glass  of  reason/'  as  Meister  Eckhart  did.  Joachim  strives  con- 
tinually to  express  the  insight  that  truth  is  a  matter  not  of  words, 
but  of  the  spirit,  that  reality  is  not  to  be  known  discursively  but 
only  by  direct  acquaintance — but  even  this  negative  side  of  his 
message  he  can  express  but  fitfully.  The  substance  of  his  mes- 
sage in  the  Liber  Concordiae  is,  that  everywhere  the  Word,  imper- 
fect, symbolic,  comes  first;  with  fuller  attainment,  the  Spirit  fol- 
lows— instances  of  his  many  examples  are  Jeremiah  following 
Isaiah,  Paul  before  John,  the  Holy  Ghost  after  Christ.168  Joa- 
chim knew  the  reality  of  the  inner  life,  the  value  of  personality, 
what  the  full  truth  must  be  like  if  only  he  could  attain  to  it, 
only  find  satisfaction,  only  articulate  as  much  as  he  had  experi- 
enced. Yet  the  full  attainment  never  came — and  it  is  significant 
that  the  only  mystical  element  in  Joachim,  which  a  candid  consid- 
eration and  a  consistent  connotation  of  mysticism  can  find  in  him, 
is  this  dim  sense  of  what  the  real,  the  whole  must  be,  which  kept 
him  ever  dissatisfied,  ever  groping,  ever  chaotic,  but  never  uncer- 
tain of  his  aim  or  of  his  way. 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE.  59 

For  Bonaventura,  the  case  is  widely  different.  His  Itinerarium 
Mentis  in  Deum  tells  the  story  of  his  mystical  experience,  in 
seven  stages,  and  shows,  more  sharply  than  either  Bernard  or 
Joachim,  how  the  direct  acquaintance  with  the  most  Real  which 
is  the  mystic's  claim,  transforms  their  knowing  of  particulars. 
The  first  six  steps  in  this  "Journey  to  God"  are,  curiously 
enough,  the  result  of  the  seventh.  They  are  supposed,  indeed, 
to  be  an  account  of  the  progress  of  the  soul  to  God  by  ways  of 
mediation, — by  descriptive  knowing  about  the  Real,  by  experi- 
ence of  this  world,  etc.  Yet  Bonaventura  shows  us  in  these 
six  steps  a  world  so  shot  through  and  through  with  God  that 
they  show  us  more  plainly  even  than  the  seventh,  which  is  a 
direct  description  of  the  mystical  ecstacy  and  attainment,  what 
the  nature  of  the  mystical  knowledge  is.  The  only  meaning  which 
the  parts  have  for  Bonaventura  at  all  is  their  relation  to  the 
whole,  the  fact  that  they  are  "vestigia  Dei/'169  At  the  last,  after 
the  "beauty  and  goodness"  of  the  world  shall  have  sufficiently 
exalted  the  mind,  "Do,  thou,  oh  friend,  proceed  boldly  on  the 
way  to  mystic  visions ;  abandon  the  senses  and  the  operations  of 
the  intellect;  abandon  things  sensible  and  things  invisible,  and 
all  non-being  and  being;  and  as  far  as  is  possible,  unknowingly 
restore  thyself  to  the  unity  of  him  who  is  above  all  essence  and 
all  science."170  Here  again,  we  have  the  negative  path  of  renun- 
ciation ;  here  again,  we  have  the  repudiation  of  idea,  symbol,  the 
assertion  of  direct,  unmediated  and  penetrating  knowledge  of  the 
ultimately  real.  Finally,  we  have  here  again  the  refusal  to  char- 
acterize the  finally  Real,  in  the  fear  lest  it  should  become  some- 
thing less  than  the  wholly  real, — yet  the  assertion  just  is  the 
assertion  of  a  major  certainty  which,  because  it  is  a  certainty  of 
the  whole,  cannot  be  invalidated  by  any  to-be-discovered  aspect 
of  reality. 

Yet  in  Bonaventura  we  find  still  a  new,  and  as  it  seems  to  me, 
a  consciously  given,  aspect  of  this  immediate  insight  as  insight 
into  the  whole.  In  spite  of  the  optimism  of  Bonaventura  in 
describing  the  world  of  nature — there  is  in  him  none  of  the  dark 
depression  over  the  world  which  we  find  in  Joachim — there  is, 
in  his  final  vision,  a  certain  noble  sadness,  a  certain  assertion  of 
supreme  value  beyond  joy.  Thus  he  says,  "For  in  rising,  by  an 
immeasurable  and  pure  ecstacy  of  mind,  above  thyself  and  all 


60  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

things,  thou  shalt  ascend,  abandoning  all  things  and  freed  from 
all  things,  to  the  superessential  ray  of  divine  darkness.  But  if 
thou  wouldst  learn  how  these  things  are  done,  ask  grace,  not 
learning;  desire,  not  intellect;  the  groaning  of  prayer,  not  the 
diligence  of  reading: — darkness,  not  clearness;  not  light,  but 
fire  totally  enflaming  and  transporting  into  God  by  excessive 
unctions  and  most  ardent  affections.  ...  a  fervor  .  .  .  which 
says,  'My  soul  hath  chosen  strangling  and  my  bones  death/  "171 
"He  who  chooseth  this  death  may  see  God,  because  it  is  true 
beyond  doubt:  'Man  may  not  see  me  and  live/  Let  us  die,  there- 
fore, and  enter  into  darkness/'172  Bonaventura  has  found  here 
a  supreme  value,  which  one  may  not  indeed  describe  in/  tejms 
of  lesser  values,  but(  which  is,  nevertheless,  known  as  inclusive  of 
all  reality,  even  of  the  sharpness  and  mystery  of  evil;  and 
which  is,  at  the  same  time,  known  as  the  abiding-place  of  the 
soul.  Once  it  has  been  discovered,  the  reality  is  known  as  hav- 
ing been  always  present,  always  in  some  sense  known,  never 
more  to  depart,  always  to  be  illuminative  of  all  other  knowing. 

We  have  found,  indeed,  that  the  experience  of  these  three  mys- 
tics corroborate  the  conclusions  as  to  the  nature  of  mystical 
insight  which  we  had  found  from  an  analysis  of  the  problem  in 
Meister  Eckhart's  works — namely,  that  the  essential  character 
;  of  the  mystical  insight,  is  that  it  is  an  immediate  knowing  of  the 
whole,  of  the  subject-character  of  reality.  It  remains  to  seek  the 
relation,  at  this  point,  of  mystical  insight  to  ordinary  thinking,  to 
ask  if  such  experience  as  the  mystic's  is  possible  and  actual — 
if  it  is,  as  our  analysis  of  validity  would  indicate,  necessary, — in 
usual  cognitive  experience.  When  this  question  is  answered, 
it  will  be  seen,  not  that  immediate  insight  and  mediated  knowing 
are  fundamentally  different,  but  that  the  two  cognitive  func- 
tions are  organically  and  necessarily  related,  and  that  in  this 
relation  lies  the  solution  of  the  paradox  of  thinking. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  MYSTICAL  MOTIVE  IN  THINKING. 

r     We  have  seen  that  what  mysticism  really  is,  is  a  sort  of  con-! 

|  sciousness  of  the  whole-character  of  reality,  a  seeing  of  all  finite 
experience  as  bathed  in  a  universal  light  which  alone  gives  value 
and  meaning  to  the  particular  items  of  experience.  •  We  have  also 
seen  the  question  become  urgent  as  to  whether  the  mystic's  report 
can  have  any  general  contribution  to  make  to  an  understanding  of 
the  knowing  process — as  to  whether  this  experience-medium  of 
the  mystic's  belongs  only  to  him,  is  a  peculiar  and  subjective 
affair,  or  whether  it  contains  any  principle  of  validity,  objectivity. 
We  have  found,  in  general  terms,  that  some  such  achievement 
as  the  mystic's  is  much  more  than  a  principle  of  validity — that 
it  is,  in  some  way,  a  constituent,  the  very  basis,  of  any  possi- 
bility of  valid  judgment.  It  remains  to  consider  this  last  broad 
claim  more  particularly.  All  thinking  claims  to  be  valid — must 
all  thinking  appeal  to  and  be  rooted  in,  a  consciousness  of  the 
whole  of  reality? 

It  is  the  object  of  this  chapter  to  show  that  this  is  and  must  be 
the  case — that  all  consecutive  thinking,  all  thinking,  in  the  stricter 
sense  of  the  word,  presupposes  an  immediate  and  ever-attendant 
knowledge  of  the  whole-character  of  reality — that  this  knowledge 
is  essentially  like  the  mystic's,  in  that  it  is  universal,  not  particu- 
lar; and  is  not  founded  on  any  other  knowledge,  not  on  any 
items  or  aggregates  of  items,  of  knowledge  about  reality.  This 
quality  of  insight  in  our  thinking  gains  its  only  real  distinction 
from  typically  mystical  knowledge  in  being  unattended  to,  out 
of  the  focus  of  attention,  in  being  used  as  means  and  not  as 
end.  In  the  mystic  experience  this  phase  of  cognition  occupies 
the  center  of  attention  to  the  exclusion,  for  the  time  being,  of 
all  other  activities,  and  its  results  are  considered  of  paramount 
importance. 

The  first  support  which  one  might  urge  for  such  a  position 
comes  from  a  consideration  of  the  nature  of  reflection.  It  is  an 
ancient  puzzle — how  can  reflection,  being,  as  it  is,  a  sort  of  self- 
transcendence,  ever  begin,  and,  having  begun,  how  can  it  go  on? 


62  MYSTICISM   AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

For  any  initial  act  of  reflection  presupposes  a  previous  reflective 
act,  and  cannot  be  initial ;  to  experience  the  goad,  the  urge 
to  reflection,  the  mind  must  have  already  accomplished  an 
act  of  reflection.  This  is  not  a  verbal  puzzle;  any  dim  sense  of 
dissatisfaction,  of  puzzlement,  implies  that  the  self  is  already 
beyond  itself, — that  it  has  overreached  the  limits  of  its  knowledge 
— how  ?  When  the  child  is  not  contented  to  take  things  as  things 
,but  searches  for  a  meaning  behind  them,  his  reflective  life  is  said 
to  have  begun — but  what  save  an  act  of  reflection  could  have 

i  engendered  intellectual  discontent?  So  we  have  the  puzzle — 
without  discontent,  no  reflection,  without  reflection,  no  discon- 
tent— and  we  are  forced  to  say  that  unless  reflection,  as  the  ability 
to  stand  off  from  oneself,  view  one's  activity,  one's  knowledge, 
one's  thinking  as  something  apart,  is  due  to  a  propulsive  power 
without  itself  of  some  immediate  and  direct  character,  reflection 
can  never  begin.  In  the  same  way,  reflection  as  reflection  can- 
not continue;  each  act  of  reflection  must  be  somehow  an  initial 
act — the  life  of  thought  must  be  a  series  of  leaps  from  wider  to 
wider  points  of  vision,  each  comprehending  all  that  has  gone 
before  it,  and  yet  being  other  than  all  that  has  gone  before  it — 
unless  the  circle  of  ideas  is  never  to  escape  from  itself,  never  to 
truly  become  reflection,  thought,  discovery. 

So  if  reflection  is  to  be  a  real  act,  it  would  seem  that  one 
must  logically  say  that  it  is  necessarily  rooted  in  and  sustained 
by,  a  sort  of  intellectual  activity  quite  other  than  what  it  itself, 
abstractly  considered,  is — by  a  sort  of  unmediated,  propelling 
power  of  insight. 

This  indeed,  was  Plato's  solution  of  the  logical  difficulty.173 
How  is  learning,  inquiry,  possible?  he  asked.  For  either  we 
know  already  what  we  are  after  and  then  we  do  not  learn  or 
inquire,  or  we  do  not  know,  and  then  we  cannot  learn  or  inquire, 
for  we  do  not  know  what  to  look  for.  Plato's  answer  was  that 
we  have  indeed  already  seen  the  vision  of  the  truth ;  we  do  know 
what  we  seek.  But  we  do  not  know  it  in  its  full  reality ;  it  abides 
with  us  only  dimly,  like  a  half-forgotten  chord  of  music  which 
we  cannot  reproduce,  but  which,  when  we  hear  it,  we  shall  know, 
as  that  which  we  have  sought.  So  it  is  that  the  mixture  of 
knowledge  and  ignorance  makes  a  hunger  within  us  and  drives 
us  out  on  the  pathway  of  the  Dialectic ;  it  is  by  the  vision  within 
us  that  we  proceed,  rejecting  this  judgment  and  accepting  that, 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE    IN    THINKING.  63 

testing  all  things  and  keeping  our  course  true  by  its  light,  until 
the  vision  is  ours  in  its  fulness,  and  we  both  know  and  know  that 
we  know. 

Some  such  solution  as  Plato's  is,  I  think,  necessary,  for  with- 
out it  our  notion  of  reflection  remains  a  hopeless  contradiction; 
yet  reflection  is  of  the  very  essence  of  our  thinking. 

For  to  put  the  case  in  abstract  terms,  the  problem  comes  to  this : 
Descriptive  knowledge,  "knowledge  about,"  is  not  possible 
in  any  true  sense,  in  any  sense  of  personal  possession  as  contrasted 
with  mere  rote-learning,  the  acceptance  of  a  dictum,  without 
at  the  same  time  direct  acquaintance  with  the  subject  of  pred- 
ication. Yet  idea  is  essentially  descriptive,  predicate-ascribing; 
knowing,  in  order  to  be  productive  of  idea,  must  be  more  than  \  I 
idea,  must  be  somehow  an  immediate  experience.  This  direct/ 
acquaintance  with  reality  is  not  to  be  found  in  sense-experience  ; 
for  not  only  is  sense-experience  to  perhaps  as  great  an  extent  as 
any  experience  one  mediated  by  ideas, — but  even  if  it  were 
not,  it  would  not  be  able  to  explain  the  immediacy  which  is  neces- 
sary to  thought,  not  only  as  an  initial  power  for  it,  but  also  and 
more  especially  in  the  realms  of  conceptual  thinking,  where  at 
every  instant,  in  order  that  the  thinking  may  be  progressive,  pro- 
ductive of  novelty, — and  so  true  thinking, — in  order  that  the  circle 
of  ideas  may  not  merely  go  on  perpetuating  itself,  in  an  appar- 
ently fatalistic  equilibrium,  it  is  necessary  that  wider  insight  than 
is  warranted  by,  or  expressed  in,  just  these  and  these  ideas, 
should  be  present  in  thought — and  not  only  merely  present  in  it, 
but  present  as  its  vitalizing  agency,  its  life-blood  and  propulsive 
power.  This  is  not  merely,  however  necessarily,  a  logical  require- 
ment; it  is  a  matter  of  actual  observation  that  consecutive  and 
productive  thinking  is  attended  by  a  sense  of  being  already  at 
the  goal  while  striving  toward  it — a  sense  which  alone  is  able  to 
set  problems  and  the  conditions  for  their  solution.  And  where  I 
novelty  does  arise  in  thinking,  it  actually  arises  as,  in  some 
way,  a  making  explicit  of  the  whole-consciousness,  a  finding  of 
that  which  was  all  along  sought  and  so,  to  some  extent,  known. 
The  novel  insight  is  attended  by  a  quality  of  reminiscence,  of 
having  been  known  all  along,  of  having  been,  until  now,  incapable 
of  expression.  This  is  the  essence  of  discovery  which  is  real 
discovery — that  one  finds  a  truth  which  he  recognizes  as  having 
been  there  from  the  beginning,  true  for  him  and  for  all  men, 


64  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

if  he  had  but  been  able  to  see  it.  For  this  reason,  the  greatest 
scientific  discoveries  are  those  which  seem  the  most  obvious,  once 
they  have  been  made ;  this  is  the  secret  of  creative  works  which 
appear  to  us  as  essentially  "true" — they  are  able  to  arouse  in  us 
the  feeling  that  the  truth  of  this  poem  or  picture  is  one  which 
we  have  always  possessed,  always  known,  if  we  could  but  have 
brought  it  to  expression. 

The  life  of  thinking  it  is,  then,  to  be  more  than  mere  thinking, 
in  the  sense  of  the  acquiring  of  ideas  by  means  of  other  ideas. 
Ideas  are  necessarily  symbols ;  not  because  they  must  needs  stand 
for  a  reality  other  than  consciousness,  but  just  because  they  are 
media  of  exchange,  ways  of  holding  fast,  epitomizing,  abstract- 
ing, aspects  of  our  complex  fleeting  consciousness  for  our  own 
and  others'  inspection.  Yet  it  is  the  peculiarity  of  symbols  that 
as  soon  as  they  are  recognized  as  symbols,  they  acquire  immedi- 
ately a  wider  meaning,  become  in  some  sense  what  they  stand  for, 
certainly  something  more  than  symbols.  So  of  ideas,  and  of  the 
ideational  process — when  we  recognize  them  as  symbols,  we  see 
that  they  must  be  at  the  same  time  more  than  that,  that  they 
imply  something  non-symbolic,  not  like  themselves,  some  imme- 
diate (seeing-into  reality,  to  make  the  symbols  themselves  possible 
and  understandable.  /  Ideas  are  as  necessary  to  thought  as  imme- 
diate insight  is — they  make  the  inarticulate  vision  of  the  whole 
more  and  more  definite,  concrete,  valuable.  But  they  never 
replace  the  vision — without  it  they  are  meaningless  sounds,  or 
unrelated  memory-items — never  factors  in  thinking  as  such. 

To  analyze  this  concrete  and  organic  life  of  thought  is  neces- 
sarily to  become  abstract,  to  symbolize  it  further,  place  it  under 
false  analogies.  Yet  a  particular  analysis  of  it  can  yield  further, 
and  concrete,  supports  for  our  thesis,  and  might  make  our  idea 
of  thinking  clearer  and  more  definite  in  its  final  synthesis. 

Do  we  find  mystical  insight  actually  at  work  in  thought  in 
such  a  way  that  we  can  isolate  and  examine  it,  make  its  mean- 
ing sharp  ?  I  think  that  this  is  the  case. 

First,  let  us  consider  the  more  obviously  distinguishing  features 
of  thinking.  One  must,  of  course,  consider  here  only  that  think- 
ing which  aims  at  knowledge,  truth — the  loose  drift  of  idle  fan- 
cies of  everything  that  "goes  through  our  heads"  or  the  more 
closely  articulated  imaginative  building  up  of  air  castles, 
although  the  term  "thinking"  is  often  applied  to  them  cannot 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE    IN    THINKING.  65 

concern  us  here,  for  what  we  are  primarily  trying  to  do  is  to 
examine  two  ways  of  seeking  truth  which  appear  at  first  sight  as 
utterly  different.  Activities  which  do  not  make  claim  to  this 
purpose  have  really  no  call  on  our  attention.  Yet  some  refer- 
ence to  them  is  necessary  in  order  to  differentiate  thinking  for 
our  purpose. 

What  is  it,  then,  that  distinguishes  thinking  in  the  stricter 
sense  from  all  other  conscious  manipulation  of  words,  ideas,  sym- 
bols? Dewey  says  on  this  point,17*  "Now  reflective  thought  is 
like  .  .  .  (any)  random  coursing  of  things  through  the  mind 
in  that  it  consists  of  a  sequence  of  things  thought  of;  but  it 
is  unlike  in  that  a  mere  chance  occurrence  of  the  chance  'some- 
thing or  other'  does  not  suffice.  Reflection  involves  not  merely 
a  sequence  of  ideas  but  a  consequence — a  consecutive  ordering 
in  such  a  way  that  each  determines  the  next  as  its  proper  out- 
come, while  each  in  turn  leans  back  on  its  predecessors.  The 
successive  portions  of  the  reflective  thought  grow  out  of  one 
another  and  support  one  another;  they  do  not  come  and  go  in 
a  medley.  Each  phase  is  a  step  from  something  to  something — 
technically  speaking,  is  a  term  of  thought.  Each  term  leaves  a 
deposit  which  is  utilized  in  the  next.  The  stream  becomes  a 
chain."17*  The  character  of  consecutiveness  is  an  obvious  enough 
difference,  at  first  sight,  by  which  to  distinguish  thinking,  from 
day-dreaming,  for  instance;  but  the  psychologist  would  say, 
"Yes,  but  every  flow  of  consciousness  is  likewise  a  chain — each 
distinguishable  element  leaves  a  deposit  which  is  utilized  in  the 
next — each  determines  the  next  as  its  proper,  indeed,  as  its 
inevitable,  outcome,  given  all  the  circumstances.  The  law  of 
association  forbids  a  mere  medley  as  firmly  as  any  ultimate  aim 
at  truth/'  What  then  becomes  of  law  and  order  in  thinking  as 
a  mark  by  which  to  distinguish  it  from  any  flow  of  conscious- 
ness? One  answers,  that  no  matter  how  strictly  determined 
causally  the  flow  of  unpurposive  consciousness  may  be  assumed 
to  be  within  itself,  thinking  in  the  strict  sense  may  yet  be  cut 
off  from  it  here,  for  thinking  is  determined  by  the  principle  of 
relevance — it  is  bound  to  those  ideas  which  are  relevant  to  the 
purpose  of  its  inquiry,  and  to  those  only,  and  it  must  consider 
them  when  and  where  they  are  relevant. 

Sidgwick  has  shown  the  place  which  relevance  has  in  think- 
ing.175   After  showing  that  no  fact  gets  its  evidential  value  except 

5 


66  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

through  a  principle  accepted  as  true,  his  argument  goes  on  to 
examine  what,  since  knowledge  means  knowledge  of  the  proper 
application  of  a  rule,  such  knowledge  of  proper  application  may 
be.  This,  he  says,  consists  in  our  knowledge  of  the  exceptions 
of  this  general  application.  We  usually  assume  that  "everyone 
knows"  what  the  exceptions  of  any  given  principles  are — that 
is,  what  differences  in  the  particular  cases  become  relevant  to 
the  application  of  a  rule.  In  applying  a  rule  to  a  particular  case, 
we  tacitly  assume  that  here  the  differences  are  not  relevant,  that 
the  likenesses  are — that  this  case  is  not  one  of  the  exceptions  of 
the  rule.  But  tacit  assumption  tends  to  become  explicit  and  the 
doctrine  of  probabilities  is  put  forth  as  a  justification  for  the 
connection  between  general  rule  and  particular  case — as  an 
attempt  to  make  this  connection  a  mediated  one.  But  this  is  not 
a  safe  ground  for  inference ;  the  "chance"  is  only  another  name 
for  ignorance.  The  statistical  method  falls  short  of  being  a 
true  scientific  method,  of  yielding  verifiable  results,  because  it 
neglects  some  of  the  relevant  factors  which  belong  to  the  particu- 
lar case  or  cases  in  question.  So  in  science  in  general,  apart 
from  the  statistical  method,  we  find  that  all  errors  and  mistakes 
have  been  due  to  clumsiness  of  observation,  to  misconception  due 
to  misdescription,  of  facts,  to  false  analogy — in  short,  to  the  neg- 
lect of  relevant  differences  between  sub-classes.  And  in  more 
strictly  syllogistic  thinking,  that  which  holds  thought  to  its  true 
course  is  the — one  might  almost  say,  perception — of  what  is  rele- 
vant; all  fallacies  arise  from  some  unjustified  use  of  a  middle 
term.  That  is,  the  unavoidable  change  of  meaning  in  a  term 
which  has  been  used  in  one  context,  when  it  is  used  in  another, 
has  become  so  great  as  to  be  relevant  to  the  purpose  of  the 
inquiry — yet  this  relevant  difference  is  not  taken  account  of, 
and  a  fallacy,  an  invalid  chain  of  reasoning  of  the  type  that 
"has  nothing  to  do  with  it"  results.  Hence  the  only  final  guaran- 
tee of  validity  which  syllogistic  thinking — and  the  major  part  of 
scientific  and  everyday  thinking  is  syllogistic — has,  is  a  knowl- 
edge of  when  and  in  what  direction  a  change  in  meaning — and 
change  in  meaning  is  everywhere  and  necessary — becomes  so 
great  as  to  be  relevant.176 

The  outcome  of  this  analysis  of  the  working  of  the  idea  of 
relevance,  is,  that  no  thinking,  in  the  true  sense,  is  possible  with- 
out it;  that  it  is  attendant  upon,  and  logically  prior  to,  all 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE    IN    THINKING.  67 

rational  insight.    This  statement,  that\£he  principle  of  all  rational  1 

insight  is  relevancey  may,  however,  seem  like  a  tautology,  until 
its  full  meaning  is  found. 

What,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  relevance?  Sidgwick  himself 
would  say  that  revelance  is  a  subjective  thing — that  it  is  a  quality 
which  judgments  have  of  harmonizing  with,  or  furthering,  our 
purposes.  Yet  according  to  his  own  account  the  whole  point  of 
relevance  is  its  power  to  reveal  objectivity.  It  gets  its  character 
from  its  connection  with  the  necessary,  its  rooting  in  the  objec- 
tive, in  what  demands  the  consent  of  the  mind.  Take  away  this 
phase  of  thinking  and  you  have  the  highly  complicated,  and  per- 
haps logical,  system  of  a  madman,  but  you  have  not  relevant 
thinking — thinking  bound  to  its  task  of  building  up  an  objective 
world.  Is  this  relation  to  an  objective  world  merely  an  acci- 
dental or  apparent  one?  If  not,  what  is  it  that  makes  relevance 
not  merely  related-to-our-own-purpose-ness?  Once  again  we 
must  ask,  what  is  relevance? 

Relevance  is  more  than  mere  agreement  with  our  own  pur- 
poses; we  cannot  simply  think  the  way  we  want  to,  but  this 
very  principle  of  relevance  is  somehow  coercive.  Relevance  is 
not  merely  the  appeal  to  a  selected  context  of  our  judgments; 
quite  apart  from  the  problem  of  how  such  a  context  could  have 
been  selected,  comes  the  further  character  of  relevance  that  it 
is  a  sort  of  evaluation,  a  noting  of  certain  intimate  connections. 
Yet  how  could  the  conditions  of  a  problem  be  evaluated,  judged 
important  or  not  important  for  its  solution,  how  could  connec- 
tions be  known  and  recognized,  were  there  not,  in  every  thought- 
problem  where  relevance  is  recognized  (and  it  is  always  recog- 
nized) a  wider  insight  than  can  at  first  be  made  articulate,  an  / 
attendant  consciousness  of  being  at  the  goal  already  to  which  \ 
one  is  struggling,  even  as  the  mystic  claims  in  his  knowledge? 

An  example  of  the  way  this  consciousness  of  relevance,  which 
is,  on  its  objective  side,  the  consciousness  of  implication,  works, 
may  be  seen  in  some  observations  of  Charles  Peirce,  the  logician. 
In  attempting  to  account  for  the  great  strides  in  science  made 
since  the  days  of  Galileo,  he  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  they 
must  be  due  to  some  sort  of  "pre-established  harmony."177  On 
the  basis  of  mathematical  computations  he  says  that  these  strides, 
in  these  years,  could  not  possibly  have  been  made  on  hypotheses 
formed  on  even  comparatively  exhaustive  inductive  analyses; 


68  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

they  have  actually  been  made,  he  says,  by  a  series  of  lucky  guesses 
which  have  time  without  number  hit  the  mark — how  could  this 
be,  he  asks,  unless  the  mind  were  somehow  attuned  to  reality  ? 
How   indeed — unless   the   mind   already   knows   reality,   not   in 
slowly  built  up  aggregate  of  facts,  but  in  its  totality,  its  subject- 
nature?    For  not  only  the  swift  strides  of  science,  but  any  slight- 
est inference,  presents  this  same  problem.    In  the  important  and 
mysterious  process  of  forming  general  laws  and  hypotheses,  one 
is  forced  to  see  the  working  of  some  immediate  insight.    Logic- 
ally, it  is  impossible  ever  to  establish  a  universal  from  particulars. 
Not  only  is  a  perfect  induction  (the  old  ideal  of  science)  impossi- 
ble, since  any  such  induction  would  presuppose  a  previous  perfect 
induction  to  the  effect  that  these  are  all  the  cases  that  there  are 
or  can  be,  but  the  establishing  of_any  universal  whatever  upon 
observed  particulars  is  impossible.178    For  what  a  universal  really 
states  is,   "No  such  -synthesis  as  S.  and  P.  ever  exists" — that  is, 
in  whatever  form  it  is  stated,  its  meaning,  as  universal  meaning, 
is  the  denial  of  a  certain  relation.    As  an  affirmative  proposition 
its  intention  may  be  to  convey,  besides  its  universal,  a  particu- 
lar meaning,  to  the  effect  that   "Some  S's.  do  exist/'    but  taken 
as  a  universal  judgment  its  aim  is  to  establish  a  negation.     But 
a   negation,    an    absence,    a   something-not-there    can   never   be 
observed.    One  may  see  that  a  desk  is  brown,  not  that  it  is  not- 
white.     Yet  we  do  establish  true  universals — to  deny  it  is  to 
establish  one.    And  these  scientific  hypotheses,  these  universals, 
which  are  established  in   some  mysterious  way,   are  not   mere 
lucky  guesses;    with  greater  and   greater   exactness  the   scien- 
tific hypotheses   are   confirmed   with    ever   increasing   absolute- 
ness;   more   and   more   are   the   laws   of   nature    conceived    as 
unbroken  and  unbreakable  laws,  absolutely  uniform  regularities, 
whose  apparent  exceptions  are  to  be  explained  by  the  incursion 
of  laws  from  another  field,  so  that  an  apparent  exception  to  a 
law  of  nature  becomes  but  another  and  firmer  example  of  law 
in  nature.     How  is  inference  from  observed  particulars  to  abso- 
lutely sure  universals  made,  how  is  it  justified,  since  it  cannot 
be  done  on  the  old  experimental  basis?     Russell  says  on  this 
point,  "Implication  is  the  principle  upon  which  inference  is  justi- 
fied/'179   and  again,    "Inference  is  the  dropping-out  of  a  true 
premise.    It  is  the  dissolution  of  an  implication/'180    But  the  con- 
sciousness of  implication  is,  as  we  have  seen,  but  the  reverse 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE    IN    THINKING.  69 

side  of  our  idea  of  relevance,  which  turned  out  to  be  but  one 
aspect  of  an  ever-attendant  whole-knowledge  making  possible 
rational  insight.  It  would  seem  that  the  scientific  genius  is  he 
who  has  almost  a  sense  for  relevance,  who  sees  at  a  glance  dis- 
tant and  hidden  likenesses  and  differences  which  he  knows  to  bear 
upon  his  problem,  because  he  sees  more  clearly  than  the  ordinary 
thinker  his  problem  in  the  light  of  the  whole — just  as  the  artist 
is  he  who,  in  the  aesthetic  and  moral  realms,  has  the  same  "seeing 
eye"  for  vital  and  tremendous  analogies. 

To  put  the  case  in  more  general  terms,  it  amounts  to  this :  it  is  j 
a  necessity  that  the  mind  should  face  real  being  at  some  point  in  \ 
a  primitive  and  positive,  a  non-symbolic,  way,  if  knowledge  is 
to  be  possible.  For  I  cannot  ascribe  a  predicate  to  a  subject 
unless  I  first  know  what  the  predicate  means  (to  leave  aside  for 
the  moment  the  question  of  the  subject),  possess  it  as  something 
I  know.  And  have  I  learned  what  the  predicate  means  only 
because  I  have  previously  known  some  other  predicate  ?  Here  j 
I  have  an  infinite  regress,  with  never  any  ascribing  of  predi- 
cates possible,  unless  at  some  point  I  can  stop  at  something  I 
know  directly,  immediately,  unquestionedly.  Knowledge  must 
have  a  beginning  and  that  beginning  must  be  knowledge.  Now 
knowledge  is  the  making  of  judgments  which  ascribe  something 
to  reality;  and  which  in  turn  ascribe  (or  deny,  it  makes  no 
difference)  reality,  as  something  known,  to  various  aspects  of 
experience.  This  implies,  as  we  have  seen,  a  prior  knowledge  of  \ 
what  it  means  to  be  real ;  for  the  real  as  a  predicate  is  not  some-  \ 
thing  given  in  sense-experience;  it  cannot  have  been  acquired 
through  any  process  the  beginning  of  which  did  not  contain  any-  | 
thing  in  the  way  of  knowledge.  For  in  order  that  such  knowl- 
edge (of  what  it  means  to  be  real)  could  be  derived  from  experi- 
ence, that  experience  would  in  turn  have  to  be  known  to  be 
valid,  real,  and  would  accordingly  require  a  prior  knowledge  of 
what  it  is  to  be  real.  The  real  does  not,  as  does  the  experienced, 
simply  announce  itself,  "I  am  here."  It  must  be  known  as 
real,  and  to  know  it  as  real,  the  mind  must  have  a  prior  knowl- 
edge of  what  to  be  real  means.  But  to  know  what  to  be  real 
means  does  not  imply  an  intellectual  definition  or  anything  of 
that  sort181 — this  knowledge  is  not  a  priori  knowledge,  in  the 
sense  of  being  ready-made  symbols,  ideas,  nor  is  it  framework  of 
knowledge — for  it  is  the  very  process,  the  life  by  which  thought 


70  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

continually  overleaps,  overspans  itself,  is  forever  beyond  its  own 
symbolic  standpoint,  in  order  to  be  there  at  all.  That  this  knowl- 
edge of  reality,  the  possession  of  which  by  the  mind  makes  possi- 
ble the  whole  life  of  reason,  is  nothing  abstract  (save  when 
looked  at  isolated  and  apart  from  its  continuous  results,  ideas), 
or  barren  and  intellectualistic,  that  it  alone  makes  experience  sig- 
nificant, that  it  is  essentially  the  mystic's  knowledge  of  the  whole, 
is  seen  in  all  the  work  of  science,  of  creative  thinking,  of  discov- 
ery and  true  learning. 

This  last  consideration  may  call  out  an  objection.  For  if  one 
grant  that,  indeed,  a  certain  sort  of  immediacy  is  necessary  to 
all  thinking,  that  insight  is  an  organic  part  of  all  ideation,  cne 
may  still  ask  "Why  add  'of  the  whole?'"  What  is  the  mean- 
ing of  "the  whole"  here,  and  why  is  it  necessary — or  legiti- 
mate— to  assume  it  here  ? 

If  this  were  knowledge  of  anything  less  than  the  whole,  it 
would  become  another  instance  of  knowledge  about,  itself  part  of 
the  problem  of  how  descriptive  knowledge  about  reality,  is  possi- 
ble without  direct  acquaintance  with  it.  For  any  knowledge  of 
any  aspect  of  reality,  no  matter  how  directly  or  even  instinctively 
/won,  just  because  it  was  knowledge  of  part  of  reality,  would 
have,  in  order  to  acquire  meaning  and  validity,  to  be  attributed 
to  reality — to  become  predicate-knowledge,  knowledge  impossi- 
ble and  not-actual  without  at  the  same  time  subject-knowledge  of 
some  sort.  No  matter  how  far  back  we  press  the  problem — no 
matter  how  large  a  field  we  allow  to  instinctive  knowledge  which 
yet  is  not  mystical  knowledge  of  the  whole — we  are  forced 
always  to  acknowledge  that  this  must  be,  in  some  sense,  descrip- 
tive knowledge,  symbolic,  implying  and  demanding  this  non- 
descriptive  knowledge  which  cannot  be  of  anything  less  than  of 
the  whole.  Our  power  of  seeing  relevancies  is  not  a  power  of 
having  revelations.  It  is  not  a  question  here  of  what  are  ordi- 
narily called  "intuitions"  or  "presentiments,"  but  of  how  the 
real  character  of  thinking  is  to  be  explained,  of  a  necessarily 
inadequate  description  of  what  sort  of  direct  acquaintance  is 
implied  by  the  fact  of  rational  insight. 

The  difficulty  here,  perhaps,  is  that  we  think  in  physical  analo- 
gies ;  we  feel  that  a  person  could  know  directly  a  part  of  reality, 
as  he  could  know  by  direct  sense-experience  a  part  of  a  rock. 
But  knowledge  of  any  particular  aspect  of  reality,  however 


THE    MYSTICAL    MOTIVE    IN    THINKING.  71 

immediate  and  intuitional,  could  never  perform  the  function  this 
knowledge  does  perform,  of  guiding  and  controlling  our  think- 
ing, for  some  other  aspect  of  reality  might  at  any  time  invalidate 
it,  make  it  chaotic,  false.  If  this  were  knowledge  of  less  than 
the  whole,  we  would  not  have  any  conception  of  truth,  as  we 
have  tried  to  show ;  we  could  not  be  in  error ;  neither  could  we 
have  any  coherent  bodies  of  knowledge,  groups  of  knowledge- 
items  acquiring  all  their  meaning  from  the  interrelatedness,  from 
their  being  referred  to  the  single  ultimate  subject.  Our  knowl-' 
edge  of  the  whole  is  no  conglomerate  of  the  various  aspects  of; 
our  experience;  neither  is  it  a  sort  of  composite  abstraction  from 
those  experiences; — it  is  that  by  which  we  think,  that  which \ 
makes  any  kind  of  experience,  all  unity  and  continuity,  possible. 
This  fact  of  an  immediate  and  guiding  knowledge  of  the  whole 
is  often  enough  indirectly  acknowledged,  in  everyday  speech  and 
thought.  Take  for  instance  such  a  passage  as  this  from  an  arti- 
cle on  the  "Ethics  of  War"  by  Russell:  (It  is  often  argued  in 
this  way)  .  .  .  "  'So  and  so  crossed  such  and  such  a  frontier,  com- 
mitted such  and  such  technically  unfriendly  acts,  therefore  it  is 
permissible  by  the  rules  to  kill  as  many  of  his  countrymen  as 
modern  armaments  make  possible.'  There  is  a  certain  unreality, 
a  certain  lack  of  imaginative  grasp,  about  this  way  of  viewing 
matters."182  It  is  not  that  one  has  not  plenty  of  details  here,  pos- 
sibly all  the  details  necessary  to  consider;  the  "lack  of  imagi- 
native grasp"  is  the  lack  of  the  clear  vision  of  the  whole,  the 
clarity  of  whose  presence  distinguishes  the  thinking  of  genius,  or 
of  the  genuinely  reflective  man,  from  second-hand  thinking,  or 
from  mere  "logic-chopping."  Or  Delacroix,  speaking  of  the 
methods  of  science,  says,  "For  all  the  manifestations  of  life  it  is 
necessary  to  search  for  cases  which  shall  be  truly  typical — and  a 
case  never  can  be  truly  typical  unless  it  can  be  studied  in  the  total- 
ity of  its  conditions."183  Delacroix  did  not  mean  that  the  impossi-  ; 
ble  was  to  be  attempted;  that  one  should  attempt  to  get  and 
examine  a  case  in  .the  infinite  total  context  of  particular  attend- 
ant conditions ;  for  to  do  so,  even  if  it  were  possible,  would 
be  to  lose  sight  of  the  especial  problem,  the  especial  line  or  field 
of  inquiry,  and  so  to  make  all  progress  in  thought  impossible. 
What  he  meant  was  that  thought  must  know  how  the  particular 
fact  can  belong  in  the  relatedness  of  things,  must  see  it  in  a 
universal  light. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

SOME  OBJECTIONS  TO  AN  INTERPRETATION  OF 

THINKING  AS  INVOLVING  A  MYSTICAL 

MOTIVE. 

Objections  to  the  interpretation  of  thinking  outlined  in  the  last 
chapter  arise  readily.  They  have  grouped  themselves  in  my  mind 
under  four  heads,  which,  briefly  stated,  are  as  follows : 

(1)  The   "whole-idea"   necessary  to  thought  is  but  the  indi- 
vidual's apperceptive  mass,  his  store  of  previous  knowledge,  mere 
or  less  consciously  held. 

(2)  Thought  necessarily  involves,  indeed,  elements  unfounded 
on  previous  knowledge,  but  these  are  either 

(a)  the  acquired  experience  and  wisdom  of  the  race  in  the 
form  of  habits  of  thought,  or 

(b)  prejudices,  feelings,  emotional  rather  than  intellectual, 
not  to  be  considered  a  part  of  thinking  as  such. 

(3)  Far  from  being  a    "mystical  intuition"    our  idea  of  the 
whole  is  only  our  own  subjective  demand  that  reality  be  logical, 
lawful. 

(4)  The  pragmatic  objection  would  be  that  this  asserted  in- 
sight into  absolute  truth,  has  really  nothing  to  do  with  any  abstrac- 
tion  called    "truth,"    but   is   only   an  habitual   and   immediate 
consciousness  of  the  previous  success  or  failure  of  certain  ideas. 

I  shall  take  up  these  objections  in  order.  The  first  objection 
would  explain  our  knowledge  of  what  and  how  to  seek,  by  our 
own  already  gained  and  held  beliefs.  The  difference  between  a 
child  and  a  scientist,  this  objection  would  say,  is  wholly  a  differ- 
ence in  apperceptive  mass.  The  child  has  not  so  much  previous 
knowledge  to  guide  him.  This  is  Dewey's  opinion,  for 
instance.184  All  knowledge  is  alike  reasoned  out,  mediated.  But 
the  more  you  have,  the  more  you  get,  because  all  items  of  old 
knowledge  form  points  of  contact  for  new  knowledge,  tools  for 
the  mediation  of  new  concepts.  The  reason  why  modern  scien- 
tists discovered  the  cause  of  malaria  to  be  germs  carried  by  a 
certain  kind  of  mosquito,  when  the  Romans  had  attributed  it 
merely  to  the  "bad  air"  of  swamps,  was  that  they  noticed  rele- 


SOME   OBJECTIONS   TO    AN    INTERPRETATION    OF   THINKING.        73 

vant  differences  where  the  Romans  had  not — but  the  reason  for 
their  noticing  lay  in  the  fact  that  they  knew  more  of  science  in 
general  than  the  Romans  did — their  "apperceptive  mass"  of 
previous  judgments,  ideas,  observations,  was  larger  and  withal 
more  usable  than  that  of  the  Romans  had  been.  This  type  of 
objection  sees  the  reason  for  the  growth  of  knowledge  in  the 
race  as  well  as  in  the  individual,  in  the  cumulative  force  of  ideas ; 
the  question  as  to  the  origin  of  knowledge,  of  how  the  acquiring 
of  the  first  items  of  the  apperceptive  mass  is  possible,  is  to  it 
not  only  purely  an  academic  one,  but  also  illegitimate,  since  in  all 
originating  of  knowledge  which  we  can  observe,  in  children  for 
example,  there  are  no  true  first  items  of  knowledge — the  sense- 
perceptions  pass  gradually  into  clearer  and  more  definite  forms, 
finally  gradually  into  conceptual  knowledge  by  means  of  the 
tradition  of  the  race  preserved  in  imitation,  teaching  and  learn- 
ing, etc.  And  to  push  the  question  beyond  observed  facts,  to 
postulate  a  first  inquirer  for  truth  with  no  guidance  of  tradition 
either  physiological  or  psychological,  is  to  leave  the  realms  of 
fact  and  observation  for  those  of  pure  speculation.  The  postu- 
late of  an  "idea  of  the  whole"  in  cognitive  processes  the  growth 
of  which  we  can  observe,  is  useless,  says  this  objection;  in  any 
other  case  the  postulate  would  be  illegitimate. 

This  objection  would  substitute  for  an  account  of  the  process 
of  thought,  a  sort  of  a  mechanics  of  the  product  of  thought.  No 
aggregate  of  items  of  knowledge  is  itself  the  knowing  process, 
and  theories  which  make  thinking  to  be  the  enlarging  and  clarify- 
ing of  the  apperceptive  mass  by  the  continuous  accretion  of  new 
thought  particles,  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  thinking  is  a  living 
process,  and  not  a  dead  relation.  The  question  comes  to  this: 
To  think,  we  must  at  every  step  transcend  in  opinion  what  the 
facts  before  us  immediately  and  infallibly  warrant.  Every  judg- 
ment, however  simple,  every  inference  and  every  general  con- 
clusion does  this — and  if  such  a  process  is  not  a  rational  process, 
then  the  word  rational  is  continuously  used  without  any  meaning 
at  all.  Yet  how  is  it  rational?  It  must  indeed  be  a  mere  leap 
in  the  dark,  a  mere  mad  guess,  unless  it  implies  a  wider  insight 
than  the  fact  of  the  moment,  a  standard  to  which  we  appeal  even 
when  we  confess  the  possibility  of  fallibility.  That  at  every  step 
thinking  goes  beyond  itself  in  an  immediacy  of  appropriation, 


74  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

that  it  is  the  unity  in  which  subject  and  object  are  both  contained, 
and  which  must  overspan  all  that  could  possibly  come  in  as  an 
object  of  consciousness,  is  what  the  postulate  of  a  mystical 
motive  continuously  present  in  all  thinking,  tries  to  make  clear. 
Not  to  explain  the  origin  of  thinking  does  one  postulate  the  work- 
ing of  an  idea  of,  or  rather,  immediate  insight  into,  the  whole, 
but  rather  to  try  to  put  into  conceptual  terms  the  self-transcen- 
dent, ever-moving,  nature  of  reflection.  Unless  this  immediate, 
intuitive,  function  of  thought  is  recognized,  it  is  never  thought 
itself  that  is  being  presented,  but  the  dead  results  of  thought. 
One  can  never  explain  thinking  as  the  acquisition  of  ideas  by 
means  of  other  ideas,  for  no  simplest  idea  is  possible  independent 
of  immediate  factors  of  knowledge. 

It  is  this  truth  which  objections  of  the  second  type  would 
seize  upon.  Mediated  knowledge  is  not,  indeed,  possible,  this 
objection  would  say,  without  unmediated  knowledge,  of  a  type 
higher  than  mere  sense-data,  as  Kant  long  ago  pointed  out ;  but 
these  tools  by  which  objects  are  formed,  by  which  we  build  a 
world  of  coherence  and  unity,  are  not  the  result  of  a  direct  insight 
into  the  whole  of  reality,  but  rather  the  way  our  minds  work, 
the  acquired  habits  of  the  race. 

In  answer  to  this  objection  one  might  say,  first,  that  the  nature 
of  thought  is  not  made  any  clearer  by  pushing  back  the  problem 
to  unknown  ages;  by  regarding  present  thinking  as  but  the 
mechanical  application  of  rules  once  discovered  by  thought.  The 
problem  is  at  hand ;  it  lies  in  the  nature  of  the  thinking  process, 
and  is  not  to  be  solved  either  by  saying,  "Thinking  goes  on  as 
it  does  by  a  process  of  self -transcendence,  because  that  has 
become  the  habit  of  our  minds,"  nor  by  positing  a  regulative 
ideal  of  unity,  abstract  from  the  actual  life  of  thought,  a  mere 
measurement  for  results.  Just  as  individual  experience  is  impos- 
sible without  insight  into  the  whole  of  things,  so  racial  experience 
is  impossible  without  it. 

A  third  objection  is  of  a  different  sort.  This  necessary  factor 
of  insight  in  thinking,  this  objection  would  say,  is  not  an  insight 
into  the  whole — such  words  have  no  meaning,  since  the  whole  of 
things  can  never  be  an  object  of  knowledge — it  is  rather,  insight 
into  various  particular  practical  concerns.  It  is  plainly  neces- 
sary and  actual  that  there  should  be  in  the  cognitive  process 
unmediated  factors,  but  these  are  prejudices,  feelings,  of  an 


SOME    OBJECTIONS    TO   AN    INTERPRETATION    OF   THINKING.        75 

emotional  rather  than  of  an  intellectual  nature — far  from  being 
a  continuously  present  and  guiding  principle  in  all  thinking  they 
are  its  basis,  its  most  particular  elements,  on  a  par  with  sense- 
data.  Thought  generalizes  these  emotional  factors,  tries  to  define 
abstract  grounds  for  them.  Call  these  elements  mystical  insights 
if  you  will,  this  objection  would  say — they  are,  however,  rather 
a  point  of  departure  for  reasoning  than  an  organic  part  of  think- 
ing as  such.  Far  from  being  an  insight  into  the  whole  of  things, 
the  only  discoverable  mystical,  in  the  sense  of  unmediated,  ele- 
ments in  thinking,  take  the  form  of  particular  prejudices,  felt 
convictions  of  a  highly  personal,  subjective,  nature.  This  objec- 
tion insists  on  making  a  sharp  opposition  between  insight  and 
reason,  often  elevating  immediate  insight  above  reason,  as 
James185  and  Bergson186  do.  In  this  view,  insight  is  inarticulate, 
emotional,  direct  feeling  of  the  nature  of  things.  The  reasons 
found  for  these  felt  convictions  are  inapt  afterthoughts,  the 
results  of  sophistication,  of  a  barren,  abstract,  valueless  process. 
President  Hadley  also  makes  this  opposition  between  insight 
and  the  work  of  reason.188  Philosophy  he  defines  as  a  set  of 
working  hypotheses  which  a  man  adopts,  in  order  to  harmonize 
his  prejudices  with  his  experiences;  he  even  takes  the  tentative 
position  that  in  time  the  use  of  the  intellect  will  be  regarded  (by 
all  good  pragmatists)  as  a  confession  of  ignorance. 

Or  this  same  opposition  may  be  made,  with  the  same  objection 
resulting, — that  insight  and  reason  are  of  vitally  different  stuff, 
that  one  may  not  make  insight  of  the  very  nature  of  reason  with- 
out being  false  to  a  valid  distinction — from  the  side  of  those 
who  regard  prejudice,  as  indeed  basic  to  thinking,  but  who  take 
a  different  view  in  regard  to  its  intrinsic  value.  Such  a  differ- 
ent view  Russell  takes,  when  he  says:  "Insight  untested  and 
unsupported  is  an  insufficient  guarantee  of  truth,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  much  of  the  most  important  truth'  is  first  suggested  by 
its  means.  .  .  .  Instinct,  intuition,  or  insight  is  what  first 
leads  to  the  beliefs  which  subsequent  reason  confirms  or  con- 
futes; but  the  confirmation,  where  it  is  possible,  consists,  in  the 
last  analysis,  of  agreement  with  other  beliefs  no  less  instinc- 
tive. .  .  .  Reason  is  a  controlling,  harmonizing  force.  .  .  . 
Instinct  is  liable  to  error,  but  it  is  least  liable  to  error  in  regard 
to  practical  matters,  where  right  judgment  is  a  help  to  survival. 
In  philosophy,  it  may  be  wholly  mistaken."187 


76  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

The  point  is,  that  such  views  make  the  life  of  thought  the 
working  over  of  emotional  convictions  into  abstract  terms — 
a  process  that  is  always  attended  by  some  necessary  loss.  But 
in  reality  such  an  account  falsifies  the  actual  concrete  pro- 
cess. Apart  from  the  emotional  factors  in  thinking,  one  must 
yet  admit  an  unmediated  intellectual  insight.  Our  attempt  to  be 
reasonable  is  an  attempt  to  get  a  wider  outlook;  to  see  many 
things  at  once  from  more  than  one  side ;  to  have  a  vision  of  true 
relationships  and  total  values.  Without  this  power  of  seeing 
unities,  coherencies,  relationships,  totality,  we  cannot  see  the 
woods  for  the  trees — we  are  incapable  of  reasoning.  Yet  it  is 
impossible  to  explain  this  power  as  the  mediated  result  of  knowl- 
edge, since  it  is  itself  essential  to  all  knowledge.  One  must  say 
that  reason  is  articulated  insight  into  wholes,  not  fragments; 
that  its  true  opposite  is  what  makes  us  narrow  in  our  outlook,  the 
prey  of  our  prejudices,  while,  on  the  contrary,  our  mystical  insight 
is  not  only  the  individual's  guide  to  knowledge  but  that  which 
drives  the  race  from  subjective  to  more  and  more  objective, 
ways  of  knowing. 

That  point  is  disputed  by  a  further  general  objection.  The 
point  might  well  be  made  that  in  comparing  our  everyday  think- 
ing to  the  asserted  immediate  knowing  of  mysticism,  one  has 
been  guilty  of  drawing  an  irrelevant  analogy.  This  power  we 
have  of  seeing  totality,  this  objection  would  say,  far  from  being 
a  mystical  insight,  is  but  our  own  subjective  demand  that  reality 
be  lawful,  logical,  uniform.  Far  from  showing  that  we  have  a 
direct  way  of  knowing  necessary  to  the  processes  of  abstract 
knowledge,  such  a  study  as  we  have  made,  only  shows  that  we 
cannot  know  reality  directly,  but  only  under  the  forms  of  our 
own  subjective  demand.  I  think  that  this  objection  refutes  itself. 
It  says,  "The  light  of  the  vision  which  has  been  discussed  as 
guide  and  also  goal  of  all  our  knowing  processes — how  can  we 
know  that  this  is  an  objective  light  at  all?  We  cannot  know 
what  reality  is — we  can  only  want  it  to  be  so  and  so,  find  it 
impossible  to  think  of  it  unless  it  is  so  and  so."  But  this  very 
objection,  in  criticizing,  in  confessing  ignorance,  is  appealing  to 
a  wider  insight  than  the  mere  facts  presented  justify — it  says 
that  it  has  someway  a  vision  of  absolute  truth  and  all  its  ideal 
requirements,  by  which  it  tests  all  theories  presented  to  it.  And 
whether  the  vision  which  this  point  of  view  presents  is  complete 


SOME   OBJECTIONS    TO   AN    INTERPRETATION    OF   THINKING.        77 

or  not,  matters  little — the  fact  remains  that  one  cannot  object  to 
the  theory  that  all  thinking  involves  immediate  insight  without, 
by  that  very  objection,  establishing  the  theory.  For  how  other- 
wise could  the  objection  have  had  a  standard  of  truth  to  appeal 
to,  beyond  and  transcending  and  making  possible,  all  items  of 
experience,  than  by  an  unmediated  insight  into  reality  ?  Pragma- 
tism indeed,  would  answer — and  in  doing  so  it  would  form  the 
fourth  objection  to  our  postulate — that  this  insight  into  the  whole 
is  mediated  knowledge,  founded  on  experience  of  the  success 
or  failure  of  our  ideas,  plans  of  action,  expectations.  But  prag- 
matism cannot  explain  this  idea  of  truth  which  we  have  except  by 
saying  that  it  is  successful  and  if  successful,  true.  Pragmatism 
offers  always  a  criterion  of  truth  rather  than  an  insight  into  the 
nature  of  truth  itself — which  notion  becomes,  indeed,  in  its  hands, 
a  colossal  mistake.  Yet  how  can  there  be  error  if  there  is  no 
truth? 

But  if  we  conclude,  then,  that  what  mystical  knowledge  really 
is,  is  presupposed  in  every  act  of  knowing,  though  we  may  con- 
clude that  mysticism,  as  far  as  it  can  go  in  the  knowledge  realm, 
is  a  perfectly  valid  way  of  knowing — if  any  knowledge  is  to  be 
valid  at  all — have  we  not,  by  the  very  generality  of  our  conclu- 
sion, lost  sight  of  any  unique  and  specific  cognitive  value  which 
mysticism,  as  the  strange  and  one-sided  development  of  this 
phase  of  knowing,  may  have  to  offer? 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE   FORMULATION   OF 

THE   PROBLEM   OF    MYSTICISM   AS   AN 

EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

The  attempt  has  been  made  in  the  course  of  this  paper  to 
formulate,  more  and  more  clearly,  the  problem  of  mysticism  as 
an  epistemological  one.  The  two  facts,  first,  that  the  mystic 
experience  is  always  and  essentially  acclaimed  as  an  illumin?tive 
one,  in  which  the  subject  asserts  the  achievement  of  a  conscious 
relation  to  the  most  Real,  the  attainment  of  an  unshakable  truth- 
value,  and  second,  that  mysticism,  taken  on  its  cognitive  side  of 
direct  insight,  forms  a  functional  and  constitutive  element  of  all 
thinking,  is,  in  fact,  in  its  internal  drive,  the  very  life  of  reflec- 
tion, makes  such  a  formulation  inevitable.  For  the  first  fact, 
that,  no  matter  how  much  else  mysticism  is  (and  mysticism  per- 
haps even  less  than  any  other  type  of  human  expression  is  to  be 
forced  into  a  simple  formula),  it  can  never  be  divorced  from  the 
assertion  of  the  immediate  finding  out  of  what  reality  is,  thereby 
sending  into  the  world  some  of  the  most  tremendous  of  human 
hypotheses,  forces  the  question  as  to  how  far  mysticism  can  be 
said  to  be  rationally  grounded,  to  have  objective  validity,  to 
really  imply  anything  concerning  the  Real  it  claims  to  have  found. 

Mysticism  is,  we  have  found,  an  experience ;  but  an  experience 
is  not  to  be  lightly  thrown  out  of  court  as  meaningless.  Mean- 
ing for  us,  every  experience  of  ours  must  have,  as  being  essen- 
tially our  road  to  that  common  world  of  ours  and  our  fellows; 
the  stuff  for  the  interpretation  called  life;  and  especially  the 
meaning  of  an  experience  like  the  mystic's  must  make  a  difference, 
in  view  of  the  vast  ontological  certainties  he  asserts,  to  life  and 
to  philosophy.  And  the  only  way  in  which  we  can  arrive  at  the 
meaning  of  the  cognitive  claim  of  mysticism,  the  only  way  we 
can  judge  this  claim  is  the  epistemological  way,  in  the  light  of 
its  grounds  of  validity,  its  truth-value.  What  claim  has  mysti- 
cism to'  universality,  to  validity,  we  asked,  and  found  that  our 
very  notion  of  validity  depended  on  mystical  insight,  on  a  non- 
symbolic  knowing,  a  wider  view  than  would  ever  be  possible 


SIGNIFICANCE    OF   THE   FORMULATION    OF   THE    PROBLEM.  79 

under  the  form  of  idea,  into  reality.  To  know  and  acknowledge 
the  possibility  of  error,  of  invalidity,  is  to  know  and  postulate 
the  nature  of  absolute  truth — a  knowledge  not  ever  to  be  found 
in  the  piling  up  of  the  details  of  experience,  but  a  prerequisite  to 
that  experience.  To  be  in  error  consciously,  is  to  be  at  the  heart 
of  truth,  so  when  one  asks  "Has  mysticism,  as  the  assertion  of 
an  immediate,  non-symbolic  way  of  knowing  any  grounds  of 
validity,"  one  must  answer,  that  such  insight  as  it  names  is  the 
ultimate  and  true  ground,  not  only  of  our  notion  of  validity  but 
of  any  claim  to  validity.  But  this  consideration  forces  in  its 
turn  the  question  of  the  relation  of  mystical  insight  to  thinking 
as  such,  for  if  mysticism  is  in  some  way  so  fundamental  to 
logical  thinking  as  this  statement  would  seem  to  imply,  both  the 
mystic  and  the  ordinary  intellectualist  must  be  wrong  in  their  the- 
ory that  there  are  two  fundamentally  different  types  of  knowing, 
the  one  by  which  we  view  an  object  from  the  outside,  continually 
add  the  qualifications  of  different  points  of  view  to  it,  form  an 
increasingly  concrete  symbol  of  it  which  is  somehow  increasingly 
true,  and  the  other  by  means  of  which  we  enter  into  an  object, 
become  identified  with,  know  it  as  we  know  ourselves,  dumbly, 
inarticulately,  but  with  absolute  surety.  We  have  found,  on 
the  contrary,  that  the  mystical  insight,  far  from  being  opposed 
to  ideational  thinking,  is  a  functional  part  of  it;  and  this  was 
our  second  justification  for  the  formulation  of  mysticism  as  an 
epistemological  problem — that  without  the  formulation  and  solu- 
tion of  such  a  problem,  thinking  must  remain  a  half -understood, 
wholly  unphilosophical  concept  incapable  of  consistent  statement, 
and  in  so  remaining,  our  concept  of  reality  itself  would  have  to 
remain  as  vague,  as  self-contradictory,  as  the  concept  of  think- 
ing. For  reality  for  us  is,  and  must  be,  reality  as  constituted  by 
thought;  and  the  conditions  of  thought  are  the  conditions  of 
reality.  One  must  leave  aside  wholly  the  question  whether 
reality  in  itself  can  be  said  to  be  constituted  by  thought,  one 
must  even  leave  aside  the  question  as  to  whether  such  words  have 
any  meaning,  and  must  rest  in  the  fact  that  reality  is  reality  for 
us,  and  as  such  must  be  constituted  by  our  way  of  thinking  it. 

This  consideration  brings  us  to  the  real  subject  of  this  chap- 
ter, which  is,  "What  significance,  what  meaning  for  an  interpre- 
tation of  life,  has  the  fact  that  mysticism  is  a  problem  in  the 
theory  of  thought?"  Epistemology  and  ontology  cannot  be  finally 


8o  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

separated;  the  value  of  any  problem-setting  in  epistemology  is 
not  a  value  in  itself,  as  if  epistemology  were  a  non-philosophical, 
independent  science,  but  a  value  which  lies  wholly  in  the  light  it 
may  shed  on  the  nature  of  reality.  Not  for  the  idle  curiosity  of 
pulling  our  own  minds  to  pieces  do  we  ask  and  try  to  answer 
questions  about  the  conditions  of  thought,  but  because  we  feel 
that  only  thus  can  we  lay  a  sure  basis  for  a  true  and  valuable 
interpretation  of  life.  In  the  last  analysis,  only  the  fact  that  an 
epistemological  setting  of  the  problem  of  mysticism  is,  in  this 
respect,  more  widely  or  fundamentally  meaningful  than  the  set- 
ting of  the  problem  in  other  contexts,  can  justify  wholly  an  epis- 
temological formulation  of  the  problem. 

What  meaning,  then,  has  the  epistemological  problem-setting 
of  mysticism?  The  question  is  only  another  and  more  specific 
way  of  asking  what  meaning  mysticism  has — since  mysticism 
must  be  met  as  an  epistemological  problem. 

It  means,  in  the  first  place,  that  thought  must  have  some  direct, 
non-symbolic  feature,  an  instant  knowing  of  the  Whole.  But 
idea  is  and  must  be,  always  symbolic.  Not  of  course,  in  the 
sense  of  standing  for  a  reality,  independent  of  thought,  which  is 
its  prototype,  but  because  it  epitomizes  and  holds  fast  some  pro- 
cess of  the  mind,  some  insight,  to  which  we  can  return,  or  which 
we  can  share  with  another.  The  idea,  by  virtue  of  its  very 
permanence  and  universality,  becomes  symbolic,  a  reference  to 
something  other  than  itself.  But  the  fact  that  our  thinking  is  not 
the  formation  of  an  aggregate  of  such  ideas,  that  the  ideas  them- 
selves are  only  usable  symbols  for  certain  aspects  of  the  living 
thought-process,  brings  with  it  the  implication  that  reality  is  not 
to  be  dissolved  in  idea — that  a  part  of  it  must  remain  forever 
obstinate  to  idea,  forever  incompressible  into  the  forms  of  logic. 
Reality  for  us  is  constituted  by  thought ;  but  thought  is  and  must 
be,  by  its  very  nature,  not  wholly  symbolic,  ideational — therefore 
reality  cannot  be  wholly  impressed  under  any  category,  not  even 
that  of  Thought,  or  the  Logical.  Philosophy  is  sometimes  looked 
upon  as  the  search  for  the  highest  category  of  all ;  and  when  it  is 
so  considered,  the  widest  category,  the  highest  and  most  com- 
prehensive point  of  view  which  science  no  less  than  empirical 
consciousness  presupposes,  though  ignoring  it  in  all  their  judg- 
ments, under  which  all  reality  (so  this  search  assumes)  can  be 
subsumed,  is  found  to  be  that  of  consciousness  as  such.  Now  per- 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE   FORMULATION    OF   THE   PROBLEM.          8 1 

haps  consciousness  is  the  widest  category,  but  not  by  applying  it 
as  a  term  to  the  ultimate  reality  has  reality  been  categorized. 
Idealism  seems  logically  impregnable;  but  idealism,  as  Prof. 
Hocking  has  pointed  out,  leaves  unreconciled  two  ultimate  and 
opposed  factors  of  experience,  and  so  fails  in  its  task  as  a  philoso- 
phy,— the  task,  that  is,  of  rationalizing  the  world.  These  two  facts 
of  experience  are  first,  the  one  which  idealism  takes  up  and  devel- 
ops and  rests  all  its  great  ontological  assumptions  on,  namely  that 
reality  for  us  is  and  can  only  be,  reality  as  constituted  by  thought  ; 
but  the  second  fact  is  just  as  inescapable,  just  as  uncontrovertible, 
on  logical  as  well  as  on  empirical  grounds.  It  is,  that  what  we 
mean  by  reality  is  "not  only  that  to  which  the  mind  consents,  but 
that  which  demands  the  consent  of  the  mind."  Ignoring  this,  the 
idealist  gives  us  a  Reality  without  the  conditions  of  reality; 
because  reality  is  constituted  by  our  thought,  he  makes  it  some- 
how dependent  upon  our  thinking,  or  else  a  mere  hypostatization 
of  the  forms  of  our  thought.  But  these  forms  of  thought  are  as 
untrue  to  actual  thinking  as  they  are  to  reality  itself.  Reality 
must  be  somehow  as  sharp,  as  surprising,  as  literal  as  the  pres- 
ent moment.  L.  P.  Jacks  in  The  Yale  Review,  writing  of  the 
conception  of  reality  in  the  light  of  the  present  European  war, 
says,  "The  Real  Thing  presents  itself  not  as  an  object  to  be 
studied  but  as  a  command  to  be  obeyed.  We  are  touching  the 
imperative  side  of  reality.  Hitherto  we  have  treated  reality  as 
mainly  interesting  and  in  doing  so  it  would  seem  that  we  have 
done  some  injustice  to  the  innermost  nature  of  the  Real.  .  .  . 
We  are  beginning  to  suspect  that  the  world  contains  elements  of 
which  we  had  not  taken  account,  and  that  other  elements  of 
which  we  did  take  account  have  a  narrower  range  of  operations 
than  we  had  been  used  to  assign  to  them.  What  if,  after  all, 
something  in  the  world  has  gone  altogether  wrong?"189 — Here 
is  the  final  obstinacy  of  the  fact,  of  the  particular,  the  alogical, 
intruding  itself  on  a  large  scale,  and  reminding  us  that  the  cate- 
gorizing of  reality,  far  from  exhausting  it,  even,  if  taken  as  com- 
plete, falsifies  it.  But  if  thought  in  its  inmost  nature,  just  is 
not  a  purely  categorizing  activity,  but  an  immediate  and  non- 
symbolic  insight,  then  neither  is  reality  stripped  of  its  coercive- 
ness  and  individuality,  its  substantiality,  as  it  is  for  idealism,  nor 
are  we  forced  to  postulate  an  impossible  rapport  between  thought 
and  reality,  as  does  realism. 
6 


82  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

For  this  consequence  of  our  problem-setting  is  not  wholly 
negative.  Though  we  can  never  transform  reality  wholly  into 
idea,  our  analysis  of  thinking  has  shown  that,  in  order  that 
thinking  may  be  possible,  we  must  in  thinking  be  already  beyond 
the  idea-relation,  beyond  the  subject-object  distinction.  Just 
because  reality  is  always  greater  than  and  beyond  idea,  we  can 
know  absolute  truth,  as  we,  creatures  of  time,  could  not,  were  our 
knowledge  of  the  truth  to  depend  on  the  completeness  of  our 
working  over  of  reality  into  idea.  For  what  remains  in  reality 
obstinate  to  idea  is  not  thereby  foreign  to  it,  invalidating  it. 
This  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  meaning  of  mysticism,  of 
our  subject-knowing,  and  the  triumphant  ground  of  the  possi- 
bility of  any  knowledge.  We  know  immediately  what  reality  is, 
else  we  could  not  know  any  slightest  part  of  it  in  idea — and 
because  we  know  the  goal  of  our  search,  true  knowledge  is  possi- 
ble. This  is  the  message  of  the  mystic  insight. 

These  two  facts — that  reality  can  never  be  wholly  permeable 
to  idea,  and  yet  that  we  do  know  reality — contain  the  meaning  of 
the  old  tenacious  idea  of  reality,  as  Substance.  As  historically 
formulated  Substance  became  merely  a  supposed-to-be  embracing 
category,  and  was  none  too  wide  at  that.  But  some  such  idea 
is  necessary, — to  coherent  theories  of  knowledge,  which  do  not 
turn  thought  into  an  eternal  process  of  relation  in  vacuo,  with 
nothing  to  relate;  to  a  metaphysics  which  is  an  interpretation 
of  experience  and  not  a  repudiation  of  it;  to  a  psychology  that 
hopes  to  grapple  with  the  genuinely  psychical  problems.  The 
abiding  meaning  of  the  substance  idea  is  that  Reality  is  some- 
thing beyond  category,  beyond  predication,  a  Subject.  That  this 
is  historically  true,  is  seen  in  tracing  the  roots  of  the  sub- 
stance concept,  which  go  back  to  Aristotle's  list  of  the  predica- 
bles.  To  Aristotle,  the  fact  that  certain  classes  of  concepts  could 
be  predicated,  implied  a  subject  which  could  not  be  predicated — 
and  that  not  for  grammatical  reasons,  but  to  take  account  of  the 
alogical  feature  of  reality,  its  essential  individuality,  its  literal- 
ness.  That  this  must  always  remain  and  be  reckoned  with,  not 
merely  as  an  empirical  fact,  but  as  an  implication  of  thinking 
itself,  this  paper  has  tried  to  show. 

Yet  in  finding  the  mystic  motive  to  be  the  life-element  of  think- 
ing, we  have  not  thereby  identified  thinking  and  the  mystical 
achievement.  They  are  to  be  sharply  held  apart,  that  the  unique 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE   FORMULATION    OF   THE   PROBLEM.  83 

contribution  of  each  may  be  had.  The  distinction  is  to  be  seen 
in  just  this  attitude  toward  Reality,  the  Subject.  Thinking  as 
such — though  not  apart  from  the  mystical  insight — always  is  con- 
cerned with  the  endless,  though  triumphantly  possible,  task  of 
synthesizing  parts  into  larger  and  larger  coherent  wholes,  in  the 
light  of  the  ultimate  whole.  The  focus  of  its  attention  is  always 
on  a  part,  or  a  group  of  parts;  it  reaches  an  explicit  assurance 
of  the  whole  only  through  the  low  doorway  of  one  of  the  parts, 
and  this  assurance  is  less  than  a  certainty,  always  only  a  postu- 
late, a  will  to  believe.  The  mystical  achievement,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  focusing  of  attention  on  the  whole,  so  that 
for  the  mystic,  with  his  eyes  blinded  by  the  full  sunlight,  the 
parts  are  rather  dimmed  than  made  to  glow  by  the  light  of  the 
vision  of  the  whole.  Nevertheless,  the  mystic,,  not  only  finds  God 
as  an  implication  of  the  knowing  process,  but  knows  him  imme- 
diately and  that  in  a  way  which  we  must  acknowledge  to  be 
universal,  understandable,  vastly  significant^  Therefore  one  may 
build  on  this  examination  of  how  the  mystic  knows,  an  examina- 
tion of  what  he  knows,  believing  that  results  for  truth  will  be 
yielded. 


NOTES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

i.  Cf.  Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  144. 
Mysticism  is  "essentially  characterized  by  the  meaning 
it  gives  to  the  ontological  predicate.  .  .  .  For  the 
mystic,  according  to  the  genuinely  historical  account  of 
philosophical  mysticism,  to  be  real  means  to  be  in  such 
wise  immediate,  that,  in  the  presence  of  this  immediacy 
...  all  thoughts  and  ideas,  are  quenched." 

Rufus  M.  Jones,  in  an  article  on  Mysticism  in  Pres- 
ent Day  Religion,  in  the  Harvard  Theological  Review 
for  April,  1915,  says  on  p.  162:  "The  Absolute,  by  a 
process  of  elimination,  seemed  best  conceived  of  as  a 
'Nameless  Nothing/  'an  undifferentiated  One/  an 
'abysmal  Dark/  the  'silent  wilderness  of  the  Godhead 
where  no  one  is  at  home/  All  Christian  mysticism  that 
came  under  the  influence  of  Neo-platonism, — and  this 
includes  pretty  much  the  whole  of  Roman  Catholic  mys- 
ticism from  St.  Augustine  to  Madame  Guyon — is  pro- 
foundly marked  by  this  characterless  Absolute  at  the 
center — a  God  who  is  everything  that  finite  things  are 
not — and  is  consequently  committed  to  a  via  negativa  as 
the  only  way  up  to  him." 

Yet  not  only  Christian,  but  also  Indian,  mysticism,  in 
so  far  as  it  becomes  speculative,  becomes  a  doctrine  of 
the  abstract  universal,  whether  or  not  this  expresses  its 
purpose  and  meaning. 

Cf.  The  Upanishads,  Max  Miiller's  translation,  esp. 
vol.  II,  pp.  17,  334.  The  "Neti,  Neti"  of  Indian  mys- 
ticism expresses  as  clearly  as  any  Christian  mystical 
formulation  of  the  Godhead,  the  necessity  the  mystic  is 
under  when  he  becomes  speculative,  to  translate  his 
message  into  a  doctrine  of  the  abstract  universal. 
2.  Royce:  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  I,  pp.  191-2. 


NOTES.  85 

CHAPTER  II. 

3.  Quoted  by  Royce,  ib. 

4.  Delacroix:    Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysti- 

cisme. 

5.  de  Montmorand:    Les  mystiques  en  dehors  de  I'extase, 

Revue  Philosophique,  vol.  58,  1904,  p.  102  ff. 

Ascetisme  et  mysticisme.  Rev.  Phil.  vol.  57,  1903,  p. 
242  ff. 

Uerotomanie  des  mystiques  Chretiens,  Rev.  Philos. 
vol.  56,  1903,  p.  382  ff. 

Les  etats  mystiques,  Rev.  Philos.  vol.  60,  1905,  p. 
i  ff. 

6.  Boutroux:    The  'Psychology  of  Mysticism,  International 

Journal  of  Ethics,  1907-8. 

7.  Leuba:   Les  tendances  fondamentalles  des  mystiques  chre- 

tiens.    Revue  Philosophique,  vol.  54,  1902,  p.  i  ff.,  and 
p.  441  ff. 

On  the  Psychology  of  a  Group  of  Christian  Mystics. 
Mind,  vol.  14,  1905,  p.  15  ff. 

8.  Picavet:    Essai  de   classification  des   mystiques.     Revue 

Philosophique,  vol.  74,  1912,  p.  i  ff. 

9.  Goix:     La   psychologie   du   jeune    mystique.      Revue   de 

Philosophic  XIV,  1909,  p.  131  f.,  288  f. 

10.  Probst-Biraben :    L'extase  dans  la  mystique  musulmane. 

Rev.  Phil.  vol.  62,  1906,  p.  490  ff. 

Contribution  du  Sufisme  a  Vetude  du  mysticisme 
universel.  Rev.  Phil.  vol.  61,  1906,  p.  380  ff. 

11.  Godferneaux:    La  psychologie  du  mysticisme,  Rev.  Phil. 

vol.  55,  1902. 

12.  Cf.    Probst-Biraben:    Mystique,  science   et  magie.     Rev. 

Philos.  vol.  66,  1908,  p.  173.    "Au  fond"   mysticism  and 
magic  are  identified. 

Cf.  also  Garnett,  Mysticism  and  Magic  in  Turkey. 

13.  Cf.   Janet,    Une  Extatique,   Lecture  at  the  International 

Institute  for  Psychology,  25  May,  1901.     Mysticism  is 
4*  "determined  by  a  mental  incapacity." 

Cf.  Godferneaux:  La  psychologie  du  mysticisme 
(See  above.)  Mysticism  is  a  hypertension  "de  Tener- 
gie  vitale." 


86  MYSTICISM   AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

Cf.  Murisier:    Les  maladies  du  sentiment  religieux. 

Cf.  Binet-Saugle :  Les  varieties  du  type  devot,  in 
Revue  de  ITiypnotisme  XIV,  p.  161  ff. 

Cf.  in  general  on  this  point,  Hocking,  Mysticism  as 
seen  through  its  Psychology,  in  Mind,  vol.  21,  1912,  p. 
38  footnote. 

14.  Nordau,  Degeneration,  p.  45.    Nordau  says  further,  (We 

see)  "in  Mysticism  a  principal  character  of  degenera- 
tion— there  is  scarcely  a  trace  of  degeneration  in  which 
it  does  not  appear." 

15.  Cousin:    Cours  de  I'histoire  de  la  phUosophie  moderne, 

ch.  2. 

16.  Jundt:    Pantheisme  populaire  du  i6e  siecle,  p.  205. 

17.  Lea:    Religious  History  of  Spain,  pp.  213-215. 

p  18.  Legrain:  Du  Delire  chez  les  degeneres,  p.  61.  "Mystical 
thoughts  are  to  be  laid  to  the  account  of  the  insanity  of 
the  degenerate.  There  are  two  states  in  which  they  are 
observed — in  epilepsy  and  in  hysterical  delirium." 

19.  Cf.    de   Montmorand:    Ascetisme   et   mysticisme.      (See 

above.) 

20.  Hocking:  Mysticism  as  seen  through  its  Psy.  p.  61.    (See 

above.) 

21.  Coe:    Sources  of  the  Mystical  Revelation. 

Hibbert  Journal,  January,  1908.     . 

22.  With  the  introduction  of  the  last  two  factors,  Coe  con- 

sciously enlarges  his  problem,  for  he  says  "All  religion 
is  the  making  real  to  ourselves  of  something  not  per- 
ceived,"— and  here  arises,  according  to  his  doctrine,  the 
problem  of  a  racial  will. 

23.  Leuba:     Les    tendances    fondamentalles    des    mystiques 

chretiens.     (See  above.) 

24.  For  example  Schroeder,  in  an  article  on  Die  gekreuzigte 

Heilige  von  Wildisbuch,  in  the  Zentralblatt  f iir  psycholo- 
gische  Analyse  und  Psychotherapie,  vol.  9/10,  July 
1914,  p.  471,  says  in  conclusion  after  analysis:  "Die 
wirkliche  treibende  Kraft  jedoch,  in  dieser  ganzen  Auf- 
fuhrung  war  die  nur  schwach  oder  halb  in  Bewusstsein 
getretene  Begierde  nach  erotischem  Reiz. — Die  direkte 
Quelle  des  anscheinend  Transzendentalen — der  Reli- 
gion— war  der  abnorm  Geschlechts-drang.  Es  ist  in 


NOTES.  87 

diesem  Falle  ganz  klar,  dass  die  eigene  Natur  der  Reli- 
gion, wie  sie  sich  in  den  uber-naturlichen  Kraften 
ausserte,  Moss  uber-normaler  Sensualismus,  vergeistig- 
ter,  transzendentalisirter  vergotterter  Psychoerotismus 
war  .  .  .  (Und)  dieser  Fall  ist  nur  einer  von  vielen  eine 
ahnliche  Deutung  zulassenden." 

25.  de  Montmorand,  L'erotomanie  des  mystiques  Chretiens. 
(See  above.) 

5§t     Hocking,  Mys.  as  seen  through  its  Psy.  p.  59-60. 

27.  Hocking,  ib.  pp.  48  ff. 

28.  Hocking,  ib.  p.  51. 

29.  de  Montmorand:   Ascetisme  et  mysticism.     (See  above.) 

30.  Delacroix:    Etude  oThistoire  et  de  psychologie  du  mysti- 

cisme.     (See  above.) 

31.  Delacroix,  ibid, — p.  415. 

32.  de  Montmorand:  Ascetisme  et  mys.9  esp.  p.  261,  262. 

33.  Hocking:  Mys.  as  seen  through  its  Psy.  p.  54  ff. 
54.     Ibid,  p.  57-60. 

35.     Ibid,  p.  61. 

Cf.  Boutroux:  The  Psychology  of  Mysticism,  p.  182. 
Delacroix:  Etude  d'histoire  et  de  psy.  du  mys.  p.  415  ff. 
Boutroux:   The  Psychology  of  Mysticism,  p.  183-187. 

39.  Xordau:    Degeneration,  p.  262,  268. 

40.  Hocking:  Mys.  as  seen  through  its  Psy. 

41.  Goix:    La  psychologie  du  feune  mystique,  p.  295,  305 

etaL 

42.  Hocking,  ibid,  p.  61. 

43.  Ribot:   Psychologie  de  I 'attention,  ch.  3. 

44.  Goix,  ibid. 

45.  Picavet:  Essai  de  classif.  des  mystiques  in  Rev.  PhiL  voL 

74,  1912,  p.  i.  Of  mysticism  the  "ideal  est  perfection 
sans  forme  complete  en  Dieu,  aussi  elevee  que  possible 
<jar»s  ITiomme." 

46.  Recejac :   Essay  on  the  Bases  of  the  Mys.  Knowledge. 

Cf.  "Mys.  is  the  attempt  to  draw  near  to  the  absolute 
in  moral  union,"  p.  64. 

47.  Recejac,  ibid,  p.  277,  278,  258. 

48.  Paulsen:   System  of  Ethics,  p.  109.     For  instance,  phil- 

osophy on  a  mystic  basis,  esp.   Plotinus,  becomes  a 


88  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

"study  of  death."  The  indictment  is  brought  against 
mediaeval  Christianity  in  general. 

49.  Nash:    Ethics  and  Revelation,  pp.  180-184.     "Ethics   (on 

the  mys.  basis)  becomes  self -destructive." 

50.  DeWulf,  History  of  Mediaeval  Philosophy,  p.  213. 

51.  See  Garbe,  Buddhist  Influence  in  the  Gospels,  Monist,  Oct. 

1914.  Garbe  relates  from  the  Maha-parinibbana-sutta, 
Buddha's  temptation  to  commit  suicide  after  the  enlight- 
enment— a  temptation  presented  in  the  words  "May  the 
exalted  one,  oh  Sire,  enter  now  into  Nirvana,  may  the 
perfect  one  now  be  pleased  to  expire."  Buddha  felt 
that  he  could  not,  that  he  must  obtain  monks  and  dis- 
ciples enough  to  assure  the  continuance  of  the  way,  of 
his  doctrine  (and  that  in  spite  of  his  doctrine). 

52.  Eckhart,  Schriften  und  Predigten. 

Also  p.   176 — "Ware  ich  nicht,  so  ware  auch  Gott 
nicht." 

53.  Tauler,  from  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Mystik  im  Mitt  el- 

alter,  Dorffling  and  Francke,  vol.  II,  324. 

54.  Peabody,  Mysticism  and  Modern  Life,  Harvard  Theologi- 

cal Review,  Oct.  1914. 

55.  Underbill,  The  Mystic  Way,  1913,  p.  45  ff. 

56.  See  Preger,  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Mystik,  p.  207  ff. 

Also  appendix,  p.  461  if.,  Satze  der  Briider  des  freien 
Geistes  um  die  Mitte  des  dreizehnten  Jahrhunderts. 

57.  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  p.  97. 

58.  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  426. 

59.  Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p. 

350- 

60.  Hocking,  Mys.  as  seen  through  its  Psy.  p.  45. 

61.  See  the  whole  discussion  of  mysticism,  and  the  introduc- 

tion to  the  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience. 

62.  See  Inge,  Mysticism  and  Institutionalism.  in  Hibbert  Jour- 

nal, July  1914.  See  also  Delacroix,  Etude  d'histoire, 
etc.,  p.  7. 

63.  Inge,  Mys.  and  Instit. 

64.  Hocking,  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  350. 

65.  Cf.  Holmes,  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Mozart,  p.  317 

ff.  "When  or  how  my  ideas  come,  I  know  not,  nor  can 
I  force  them.  Those  that  please  me  I  retain  in  my 


NOTES.  89 

memory,  and  am  accustomed  to  hum  them  to  myself. 
If  I  continue  in  this  way  it  soon  occurs  to  me  how  I  can 
turn  this  or  that  morsel  to  account.  .  .  .  All  this  fires  my 
soul,  the  subject  enlarges  itself,  and  the  whole  although 
it  be  long,  stands  almost  complete  and  finished  in  my 
mind,  so  that  I  can  survey  it  like  a  fine  picture  or  statue. 
Nor  do  I  hear  in  my  imagery  the  parts  successively,  but 
all  at  once.  What  a  delight  this  is,  I  cannot  express." 
Quoted  from  Mozart. 

Or  cf.  Kingsley,  Life,  vol.  I,  p.  53  ff.  "When  I  walk 
the  fields  I  am  oppressed  now  and  then  with  an  innate 
feeling  that  everything  I  see  has  a  meaning  if  I  could 
but  express  it.  And  this  feeling  of  being  surrounded 
with  truths  I  cannot  understand  amounts  to  inexpressi- 
ble awe  sometimes.  Have  you  not  felt  at  times  that 
your  real  soul  was  imperceptible  to  your  mental  vis- 
ion, except  at  a  few  hallowed  moments  ?  That  in  every- 
day life,  the  mind,  looking  at  itself,  sees  only  the  brute 
intellect  grinding  and  working,  not  the  divine  particle 
which  is  life  and  immortality?" 

Cf .  also  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Exper.  pp.  383- 

396. 

66.  Cf.  Dwelshauvers,  Du  sentiment  religieux  dans  ses  rap- 

ports avec  I' art,  in  Revue  de  Metaphysique  et  de 
Morale,  July,  1914. 

67.  Russell,  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  pp.  20,  21. 

CHAPTER  III. 

68.  James,  Chapter  II,  Varieties  of  Relig.  Exper.,  p.  380-382. 

69.  Russell,  Mysticism  and  Logic,  Hibbert  Journal,  July,  1914. 

70.  Hinton,  quoted  in  Inge,  Chr.  Mys.,  p.  339. 

Cf.  Behn,  Uber  das  religiose  Genie,  in  Archiv  fur 
Religionspsychologie,  1914,  p.  53.  "Die  Mystiker 
behaupten  eine  uber-wissenschaftliche  Einsicht.  In  der 
Wissenschaft  gibt  es  kein  Innewerden  des  Wirklichen, 
kein  Zusammenfallen  von  Erlebnis  und  Erkenntnis  der 
Dinge.  Die  Mystik  fesselt  uns  in  der  Hauptsache  da, 
wo  sie  dies  Innewerden  behaupten  muss,  wo  ihre  Ein- 
sicht die  Erkenntnis  der  Dinge  bereichert,  wo  sie  reine 
Mystik  ist." 


90  MYSTICISM    AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

71.  Hocking:    Meaning  of  God,  etc.,  p.  350. 

72.  Pfleiderer,  quoted  in  Inge.  Chr.  Mys.,  p.  339. 

73.  Ribot :   La  psychologie  de  I' attention,  ch.  3. 

74.  Life  of  the  Blessed  Henry  Suso,  by  Himself,  translated  by 

T.  F.  Knox,  pp.  56-80. 

75.  Upanishads,  translated  by  Max  Miiller,  vol.  II,  17,  334. 

See  also  Royce,  World  and  the  Individual,  pp.  156- 

175- 

76.  Cf.  esp.  Republic,  7th  Book,  and  Phaedrus.    Having  shown 

(in  the  Theatetus)  the  impossibility  of  denning  knowl- 
edge as  immediate  possession,  Plato  demonstrates  the 
possibility  and  necessity  of  another  order  of  immediacy 
in  which  the  mind's  knowledge  is  not  acquired  experi- 
ence, but  which  simply  is,  the  life  and  function  of 
intelligence.  Jones  says  on  this  point  (Mysticism 
in  Present  Day  Religion,  p.  164)  :  "This  great  intellec- 
tual movement  insisted  that  that  which  is,  TO  6V,  is  one, 
permanent,  immutable,  and  free  from  all  becoming. 
Mind  in  order  to  know  Reality  must  itself  be  that  Real- 
ity, and  therefore  if  we  human  beings  can  rise  from 
our  world  of  shadows,  form  our  cave-dwelling,  and  be 
that  which  Is,  it  is  because  there  is  something  in  the 
soul  unsundered  from  that  Reality  which  it  seeks." 

77.  Plotinus,   in   Bakewell's   Source   Book   in   Ancient   Phil- 

osophy, pp.  357-36o,  363-368,  Enneads  V  9  §  u,  VI  9 
§  i  esp. 

78.  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  Spiritual  Canticle,  stanza  6. 

79.  Dionysius,  Mystica  Theologica,  ch.  i. 

80.  See  Inge,  Light,  Life  and  Love,  p.  96. 

81.  Madame  Guyon,  Spiritual  Torrents,  p.  62. 

82.  Goethe,  quoted  in  Inge,  Chr.  Mysticism,  p.  338. 

83.  Quoted  in  Hocking,  Mys.  as  seen  through  its  Psy.,  p.  44. 

84.  See  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  p.  179. 

Suso  calls  himself  always    "Servitor  of  the  Divine 
Wisdom." 

85.  See  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  pp.  219-220. 

86.  Eckhart:    Schriften  and  Predigten. 

87.  Cf.  Hocking  (though  he  is  not  supporting  precisely  this 

point)  The  Meaning  of  God,  etc.,  p.  350. 


NOTES.  9 1 

88.  Cf.  Royce,  Studies  in  Good  and  Evil,  pp.  271-273,  from 

whom  I  have  taken  the  idea  of  this  account  of  the  mys- 
tic's logic. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

89.  Denifle,  Meister  Eckharifs  Lateinische  Schriften,  in  Archiv 

fur  Literatur  und  Kirchengeschichte  des  Mittelalters, 
vol.  II,  p.  426. 

90.  See  Windelband,  Geschichte  der  Philosophie,  p.  249. 

91.  Denifle,  Meister  E's.  lateinische  Schr.  p.  436. 

92.  Ibid,  p.  454. 

93.  Eckhart,  Schriften  u.  Predigten,  vol.  I,  pp.  84. 

94.  Ibid,  p.  126. 

95.  Ibid.  pp.  148-150,  161-162,  178,  179. 

In  some  of  these  places,  Eckhart  contradicts  accepted 
authorities,  as  for  instance  on  p.  145,  where  he  says  that 
St.  Paul  did  not  speak  certain  words  under  inspira- 
tion, that  his  (Eckhart's)  truth  is  higher. 

96.  Ib.,  pp.  1 88  and  189. 

97.  Ib.,  p.  190. 

98.  Ib.,  p.  193. 

99.  Ib.,  p.  177. 

100.  Ib.,  p.  148. 

101.  Ib.,  p.  147. 

102.  Ib.,  105. 

103.  Eckhart,  Schr.  u.  Predigten,  vol.  II,  pp.  203,  204. 

104.  Eckhart,  Schr.  u.  Predigten,  vol.  I.,  pp.  179. 

Quoted  from  Dionysius  by  Meister  Eckhart:  "Wollt 
ihr  Gott  aber  in  Wahrheit  erkennen,  so  musst  ihr  em- 
sehen,  dass  er  'etwas  Unbekanntes'  ist!  Dionysius  hat 
das  gesagt." 

105.  Eckhart,  Schr.  u.  Predigten,  vol.  II,  p.  207. 

106.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  102. 

107.  Ibid,  p.  105. 

108.  Ibid,  pp.  no,  in. 

109.  Ibid,  pp.  162,  165,  1 66. 

no.  Ibid,  p.  165.  "Sage  ich,  'Gott  ist  gut/  so  ist  das  nicht  wahr 
— ich  bin  gut,  Gott  ist  nicht  gut.  Ich  bin  besser  als 
Gott." 


92  MYSTICISM   AN   EPISTEMOLOGICAL   PROBLEM. 

Or,  p.  158.  "(Ein  heidnischer  Meister  sagt" — but 
quoted  as  true)  "indem  sie  Gott  liebt,  nehme  die  Seele 
ihn  unter  der  Hiille  der  Giite — Die  Vernnuf  t,  aber,  zieht 
Gott  diese  Hiille  ab,  und  nimmt  den  blossen  Gott." 

Or,  p.  156.    "In  Gott  ist  weder  Gutes  noch  Besseres, 
noch  das  Beste !    Wer  behauptet,  Gott  sei  gut,  der  tate 
ihn  ebenso  unrecht,  als  wer  die  Sonne  schwarz  nannte." 
in.     Ibid,  p.  168. 

112.  Cf.  Ibid,  p.  172.     "Darum  bitten  wir  Gott,  dass  wir  uns 

Gott   ledig  machen — dass   wir   die  Wahrheit   greifen, 
und  machen  Gebrauch  von  unserer  Ewigkeit." 

Or  again,  p.  160.  "Die  eigentliche  Bezeichnung,  die 
man  Gott  beilegen  kann,  ist  Wort  und  Wahrheit." 

113.  Ibid,  pp.  64,  65. 

114.  Ibid,  p.  64. 

115.  Ibid,  p.  65. 

116.  Ibid,  p.  47. 

117.  Ibid,  p.  10. 

118.  Ibid,  p.  ii. 

119.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  19. 

120.  Ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  202. 

121.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  193. 

122.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  193. 

123.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  63. 

124.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  66. 

125.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  98. 

126.  Ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  207. 

127.  Ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  25. 

128.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  pp.  124-5. 

129.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  134. 

131.  Denifle,  Meister  E's  lat.  Schriften,  p.  423. 

132.  Denifle,  Meister  E's  lat.  Schriften,  p.  450. 

133.  Denifle,  Meister  E's  lat.  Schriften,  pp.  417  if. 

Cf.  also  Karl  Pearson,  Meister  Eckhart  the  Mystic, 
in  Mind,  1886,  p.  20  if. 

Cf.  also  Royce,  Meister  Eckhart  in  Studies  in  Good 
and  Evil,  p.  261-2. 

134.  Cf.  Biittner's  introduction  to  his  edition  of  Meister  Eck- 

harfs  Schriften  u.  Predigten,  p.  42  if. 

135.  Eckhart,  Schr.  u.  Predigten,  vol.  I,  p.  55. 


NOTES.  93 

136.  Ibid,  vol.   I,  p.   133,  p.   156,   147,    ("Aber  mein  innerer 

Mensch  schmeckt  sie  nicht  als  Kreaturen,  sondern  als 
Gabe  Gottes")  ("Alle  Kreaturen  haben  ein  Eilen  hin  zu 
ihrer  hochsten  Vollkommenheit")  p.  148,  p.  161.  "Wer 
die  Kreaturen  recht  erkennt,  der  braucht  night  langer 
iiber  die  Predigt  nachzudenken.  Alle  Dinge  sind  voll 
Gottes," 

137.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  96. 

138.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  71. 

CHAPTER  V. 

139.  Eckhart,  Schriften  und  Predigt  en,  vol.  I. 

140.  Ibid,  p.  103. 

141.  Ibid,  p.  98. 

142.  Ibid,  p.  84. 

143.  Ibid,  p.  149. 

144.  Ibid,  p.  149. 

145.  Cf.  Hobhouse,  Theory  of  Knowledge. 

I45a.  I  have  found  a  corroboration  of  this  point  in  Overstreet, 
The  Basal  Principle  of  Truth  Evaluation,  in  University 
of  California  Publications,  vol.  I,  p.  236.  He  says  after 
discussion  of  the  inconceivability  test,  etc.,  "The  truth 
of  any  content  whatever  is  found  in  the  ability  of  that 
content  to  maintain  itself  completely.  What  is  annulled 
is  false."  Validity  is  not  a  relative  matter. 

146.  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 

147.  Cf.  Royce,  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  384- 

431- 

CHAPTER  VI. 

148.  Cf.   Stockl,   Geschichte  der  Philosophie  des  Mittelalters, 

vol.  I,  p.  293.  Bernard  is  called  "Schopfer  der  mittel- 
alterlichen  Mystik." 

149.  Stockl,  ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  880. 

150.  Engelhardt,  Kirchengeschichtliche  Abhandlungen,  p.  36. 

151.  Stockl,  ib.,  vol.  I,  p.  293-295. 

152.  Ibid,   vol.   I,  p.   300.     Quoted   from  De   diligendo   Deo. 

cl,  i. 

153.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  300. 


94  MYSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL    PROBLEM. 

154.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  301. 

155.  Ibid,  vol.  I,  p.  301. 

156.  Stockl,  pp.  302,  300.     Stockl  speaks  of  Bernard's  aim  as 

"tiefere  Erkenntnis  der  Wahrheit"  p.  302. 

157.  Quoted  by  Ratisbonne,  Histoire  de  St.  Bernard  et  de  son 

siecle,  p.  103. 

158.  Ratisbonne,  ib.,  p.  84. 

159.  Quoted  from  St.  Bernard  by  Stockl,  Geschichte  der  Philos. 

des  Mittelalters,  vol.  I,  p.  302,  from  De  consideratio 

1.  2,  C.  2. 

1 60.  Quoted  from  St.  Bernard,  de  Consid.  1.  2,  C.  2,  by  Stockl, 

ibid,  p.  302. 

161.  Quoted  from  St.  Bernard,  de  Consid.  1.  V,  C.  i,  by  Rads- 

bonne,  ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  77. 

162.  Quoted  from  St.  Bernard,  de  Consid.  1.  V,  by  Ratisbonne, 

ibid,  p.  84. 

163.  Quoted  from  St.  Bernard,  de  Consid.,  1.  IV,  C.  n,  by  Ratis- 

bonne, ibid,  p.  73. 

164.  Cf.  Engelhard t,  Kirchengeschichtliche  Abhandlungen,  p. 

44- 

165.  Cf.  Engelhardt,  ibid,  p.  269. 

1 66.  Cf.  Engelhardt,  ibid,  p.  45  ff. 

167.  Cf.  Engelhardt,  ibid,  pp.- 3-6. 

168.  Cf.  Engelhardt,  ibid,  p.  121. 

169.  Bonaventura,  Itinerarium  Mentis  in  Deum,  translated  by 

Davidson,  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  vol.  XXI, 
1887,  p.  287. 

170.  Bonaventura,  ibid,  p.  323. 

Cf.  also  p.  315. 

171.  Bonaventura,  ibid,  p.  323. 

172.  Bonaventura,  ibid,  p.  324. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

173.  Compare  the  Theatetus. 

174.  Dewey,  How  We  Think,  p.  2. 

175.  Sidgwick,  Application  of  Logic,  pp.  64-71,  113-133. 

176.  Sidgwick,  ibid,  pp.  141,  146,  281  ff. 

177.  Peirce,  quoted  by  Royce  in  The  Problem  of  Christianity, 

vol.  II,  p.  395. 


NOTES.  95 

See  also  Peirce,  A  Neglected  Argument  for  the  Exist- 
ence of  God,  Hibbert  Journal,  1908. 

178.  Cf.  Russell,  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  p.  56.    Rus- 

sell says  (with  proof)  "General  truths  cannot  be  in- 
ferred from  particular  truths  alone — they  are  either 
self-evident  or  inferred  from  general  premises.  But  all 
empirical  evidence  is  of  particular  truths.  Hence,  if 
there  is  any  knowledge  of  general  truths  at  all,  there 
must  be  some  knowledge  which  is  independent  of  empir- 
ical evidence,  does  not  depend  on  the  data  of  sense." 

179.  Russell  and  Whitehead,  Principia  Mathematica,  vol.  I,  p.  9. 

1 80.  Russell  and  Whitehead,  ibid.  p.  9. 

181.  See,  for  this  whole  point,  Adams,  The  Mind's  Knowledge 

of  Reality,  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Sci- 
entific Method,  Feb.  1913,  p.  37. 

182.  Russell,  The  Ethics  of  War,  in  International  Journal  for 

Ethics,  Jan.  1914. 

183.  Delacroix,  Introduction  to  Etude  d'histoire  et  de  psycholo- 

gic du  mysticisme,  p.  7. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

184.  Dewey,  How  We  Think,  p.  2. 

185.  James,  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  pp.  78-82,  94-96. 

1 86.  Bergson,  L' evolution  creatrice,  pp.  164-179. 

187.  Russell,  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  pp.  21-23. 

188.  Hadley,  Some  Influences  in  Modern  Philosophic  Thought, 

PP-  73>  113- 

CHAPTER  IX. 

189.  Jacks,  England's  Experience  with  the  Real  Thing,  in  The 

Yale  Review,  April  1915. 


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